Is Bush or Obama More Like Hitler?

It seems there is a popular game of comparing the American Presidents to Hitler. Maybe we are just far enough along to do a head to head comparison with Barack H. Obama and the previous champion, George W. Bush. But remember, it is a little unfair to Obama, as he had only 7 months of emulating Hitler, against 8 years for Bush.

- Hitler had a healthy vegetarian diet. Obama is closer with an organic garden on the White House lawn, but then spoils it going out to Hellburgers. Bush likes pretzels, but chokes on them. Declared even at 0 points each.

- Hitler sets up euthanasia clinics for grandmas and mentally handicapped. Obama favours abortion and Death Panels for Grandmas. Bush opposes all clinical death, including abortion. I have to give this one to Obama, but only one point as he has not yet passed any laws requiring Grandmas to be put to death, and the abortion laws are basically unchanged since Bush. Obama 1 Bush 0 (subject to revision once the gas chambers for Gandmas are set up)

- Hitler builds the autobahn and commissions the design of the Volkswagen (the car for the people). Obama decides to repair the Interstate Highways System with stimulus money, takes over General Motors, and fires the CEO. Bush merely drives around his ranch in a golf cart. 5 for Obama, 0 for Bush.

- Hitler invaded Poland, after giving assurances to the international community that he would stop after Czechoslovakia and Austria. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama does not invade anybody, although he has not yet pulled out of anywhere, and has sent reinforcements to Afghanistan. 0 for Obama 5 for Bush

- Hitler was right wing. I had at least two blogs about this, I know many on the right wing in the US are uncomfortable with this seating arrangement, but it is generally accepted; even by Conservapedia (look it up). So this stands as a big win for Bush. Bush 5 Obama 0.

- Hitler encouraged the SS and Gestapo to torture people to find out information on the resistance and the enemy movements. Bush set up Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air base, Guantanamo Camp, and secret foreign torture sites to elicit valuable information from captives. Obama is trying to shut down Guantanamo and all the torture sites, and has made torture illegal. Obama 0, Bush 5. This win was well deserved, I think.

- Hitler gassed 6 million Jews. Neither Bush nor Obama have gassed any yet, to my knowledge. Although it is rumoured that Obama second hand smoked Rahm Emmanuel once out the back of the White House sneaking a drag on a cigarette. But really, I can't in all fairness to George, award a point for that, so 0-0 here.

- Hitler's Gestapo spied on the German people to discover traitors, Jews and Jew supporters. Bush began a secret wiretap operation on Americans. I think Obama is continuing it. so Obama 0, Bush 2 (for originality)

- Hitler's assault on liberty started with outlawing all opposition parties and jailing their leaders. So far Obama has resisted throwing Bush and Cheney in jail, so he gets nothing here. Neither does Bush for allowing Clinton and (especially) Al Gore to roam free. 0-0.


Final total: Obama 6, Bush 17

George will continue to possess the Little Black Moustache trophy for another six months, when I will review Obama's accomplishments again. After that, it will be annual reviews to the end of the first term.

Defending American Intelligence

Sometimes people get the impression I am anti American, but nothing could be farther from the truth. And just to prove it, I am going to devote this entire blog to a defence of Americans against the charge of stupidity. Recently, Bill Maher declared a new rule that smart president does not equal smart country. And he cited many facts to back up his new rule, including that 18% of Americans think the Sun goes around the Earth.

I felt there was something wrong with this, as I had recently been looking into beliefs of religious Christian fundamentalists (those who believe the Earth is 6000 years old, and Adam and Ever were the first humans). It turns out that, although they believe every word of the Bible to be literally true, there are a couple of words where they use their common sense. For example, where it is stated that God placed the Earth on the firmament and it shall not be moved.

So, unlike the religious debate on Evolution, there is no major religious group in the USA denying that the Earth goes around the Sun.

I was also thinking that 18% represent the kind of universal "Irreducible Stupidity Factor" that is found everywhere, even in this enlightened country of Canada. So I looked up the survey itself and found it was taken in 1999 by Gallup.

The poll was also done in Germany and Britain, with similar results. I think the only way you could get a poll result of significantly less than 18% is if you went to a third world country, where telephone lines are only available to a part of the population. (this was a random telephone poll).

I am not an expert in polling, but I think that if you are polling for general knowledge, you might need a set of control questions just to determine if you are talking to a Jaywalking All Star or not. First ask a series of questions like "What colour was Washington's grey mare?".

Getting back to this irreducible stupidity factor, unfortunately any kind of intelligence tests have become politically incorrect ever since Nazis used them to begin a euthanasia program. But anyway: I want to apply the Scientific Method to this test. I have never tried this experiment myself, even though I was a school teacher for ten years.

The experiment would be to give a control group of random people a classroom lesson on something that is new to all of them. Like what is the colour of Anthracite. Don't give out any clues like passing around a lump of Anthracite, and don't even tell them it is like coal. For some reason, mental aids like that will improve their scores. Then give a surprise test the next day, with a multiple choice A) Black B) White C) Don't know. Whatever percent you get that say it's white, that's your Irreducible Stupidity Factor.

Now getting back to the Evangelicals who believe (I want to say "Correctly") that the Earth orbits the Sun. The reason, in my opinion, that they got it right is simply because this debate was settled before their religion was founded. On the other hand, Charles Darwin came along after the Evangelical church was established, and they found themselves trapped in a position opposing evolution just by less than a hundred years.

Propaganda: Lies are the New Honesty

Can you spot the lie in the picture? Guns are a moderately useful defense only against unarmed crazy people. A trained professional killer will eventually get you, even if you carry a loaded AR-15 everywhere you go for the rest of your life. Assault weapons are primarily offensive, not defensive weapons. Just look up the meaning of assault, if you have to. But the very fact that the "guns are for defense" argument is a lie, only makes the case for guns stronger.

In an earlier blog I mentioned that good propaganda was truthful, that a good propagandist would avoid being caught in a lie, and that lies actually weakened the point of the propaganda.

Well, that was the theory back in the early days of Nazi propaganda, but we have made great advances in the science of propaganda since then. The Nazis had no idea how much power propaganda eventually would have over people's minds.

Now studies have been done which indicate that if people support a certain cause, they are more likely to redouble their support when confronted by proven contradictory facts. So even if your cause has no need for lies to make it's case, it would be good propaganda science to include a few. If only to give your opponents a chance to call your supporters liars, and so redouble their support for your cause.

In case this is not obvious, I have a bias against lies myself. But I get worn out proving facts to counter right wing lies. So I would love to turn the propaganda tables so that it was the right wingers who were defending the truth, and leftists started telling lies. Why doesn't the left support some ridiculous lie, like for example "The Earth is Flat". It would cause no end of mental anguish to right wingers to try arguing that the Earth is actually round. And it would be great practice in the free form debates found on most TV news shows today.

I was reading through Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them", and I was struck by how much has changed in peoples attitudes even since 2003. For example, Bush talked about his tax cuts helped the poor more than the rich. Bush said "By far the vast majority of the help goes to those at the bottom of the economic ladder". Finally after much math, Al Franken basically proves that "Joe Average" would lose out with Bush's tax cuts, which in truth all went to the ultra-rich. And to Al, being somewhat naive in the world of propaganda, this seemed an open and shut case.

Now, in 2009, we have the real face for Joe Average: "Joe the Plumber". Joe the Plumber got famous for saying that he would suffer under Obama's taxes. Many TV interviews later, Joe became aware that the only way Obama's taxes would hurt him would be if he became very rich. Joe's response was that he regarded a tax cut for the poor as an unearned handout. It redoubled his support for the Republican tax policy, even though it was hurting him personally.

The important discovery is, that once a follower has been convinced to support a cause, the facts no longer matter. This is the new reality of propaganda. Telling the truth is now seen a sign of weakness, something like being an honest lawyer, or an ethical CEO. "Nice guys finish last" was expressed by baseball manager Leo Durocher in 1946, coincidentally just around the end of WW2. Considering the recent demise of Hitler and the Japanese, it was a shocking statement by Leo.

Everywhere you look on the conservative right you will find lies, and the right wing conservatives consider defending them to be a badge of honour, not shame. For example try telling a pro-war Christian that Jesus was a pacifist and see what reaction you get.

Wasn't it in the old west that a gun was called an equalizer? Lying is the great equalizer in debates against bigger intellects, and now it is part of the science of propaganda too.

Is Quentin Tarantino a Liberal?

According to most conservatives, the world is divided into "Bad Guys" and "Good Guys", and it's easy to tell who is who. A liberal would say the world is made up of people of all types, and each country, each religion has some bad people and some good people and a lot of people in between. Statements like that drive conservatives crazy.

I see Tarantino's new movie "Inglourious Basterds" is tops at the box office, and I'm not really surprised. Because the audience has almost a complete lack of historical perspective, they are getting a pure conservative philosophy of "good guys and bad guys"

Just to review some facts in the case. Before WW2, German Jews wanted to get out of Germany. No other countries would accept them in large enough numbers. The United States was one of those countries that denied the Jews a safe haven. And it was deliberate, because a large number of Americans hated Jews and were prejudiced against them. Much of this hatred came from the Southern USA where the Ku Klux Klan was leading a campaign of violence and hatred against blacks, Jews and lots of other minorities.

Was it just a coincidence that Brad Pitt, the leader of the Jewish commandos in this movie, was supposed to be from the Southern USA? Or is that part of Tarantino's conservative propaganda designed to cover up the "bad guy" aspect of Americans? Because I didn't see the movie, I'm going to have to wait to find out how Tarantino justified an all-Jewish unit (where all the members actually have a stereotypical Jewish look to them) being led by someone played by Brad Pitt, who was not only a Southerner but part Apache. And the Apache bloodline seems to be used as part of the reason for the cruelty, as if a Southerner would need native blood to be sadistic.

Just another historical reminder, slavery was a program of hate and sadism rivalling Hitlers holocaust of the Jews. Although slavery had officially ended 80 years before, the South had instituted a new version of slavery that was just as bad as the old fashioned and outlawed kind, which Franklin Roosevelt had to put an end to in order to counter the German and Japanese propaganda.

Evangelical Christian religion helps to support this kind of "Good Guy, Bad Guy" division, by insisting that you do not need to actually be good, to be a good guy. It seems like as long as you are "one of the chosen", any sadistic cruelty is forgiven. Plenty of passages in the Bible are quoted by Evangelicals to prove it. After all, they started out making excuses for slavery, and by now have pretty much memorized every passage of the Bible that supports wife beating, child abuse, slavery, and slaughter of all the enemy including women and children.

Here's an interesting Quote from Quentin Tarantino

JH: How would you describe your politics, Quentin?

QT: [Silence] I guess I'm a liberal. Definitely not conservative. I'm definitely not a Republican. Most people, when they're on one side or the other, don't paint with a small brush they paint with a f---in' roller and wipe everybody into pansy liberals or fascist dictators.

Maybe Quentin falls somewhere between, but not in the violence and gore department.

Movie Propaganda: Hate and Sadism "Inglourious Basterds"

A new Quentin Tarantino flick has just come out, "Inglourious Basterds", which despite its' name actually "glourifies" torture and violence. It is a late coming resurrection of old WW2 hate, but with a modern twist. In this film, Americans and Jews get revenge on the Nazis by being worse than the Nazis.

I just want to state clearly right from the outset that I despise this film, and any film for trying to make a profit by glorifying hate and sadism. I'm not sure I can make my statement any more clear than that. I am disappointed that Roger Ebert gave this film four stars, because I usually trust his judgment. But then he recently also gave four stars to Ponyo, which was almost incomprehensible to me. Maybe he's getting more generous with the stars these days.

I think the Basterds film plays into several modern themes. Most obviously, is the theory that the Nazi Holocaust was so bad that it excuses a lot of sadistic behaviour on the part of Jews. Personally I don't agree with this idea, but it seems to be working with a lot of Americans so far to excuse Israel for their treatment of the Palestinians.

A second theme is the idea that torture works and is excusable in relation to what you believe the enemy is doing. I would have to point out one fact and that is, the full horror of the Nazi Holocaust was not known until after the war, and so it is not meaningful to suggest that you would seek revenge for something before you even know it happened. But then again a lot of people are not really able to understand how time works.

No, I have not seen this movie, and I probably will not see it. Actually, this is not really a movie review, it is a morality check about hate and sadism. Are we Christians or are we sadists? Most atheists have a better grasp of morality than shown in this film. We keep telling ourselves that our western morality comes from Jesus, who wanted peace. Is that so?

These days, even some Christian churches are being corrupted with this pro-war and pro-torture propaganda. Listen to
a TV Evangelists calling for assassination of a foreign leader. Look at surveys done to find that the people most in favour of using torture are church-going Christians.

Now read this passage from the Bible, which I had never come across in all my years, but then granted I don't read the Bible a lot. OK not at all. This is the quote attributed to Jesus:

Matt. 10:34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

I hope this is not where Christianity is going, but obviously this gives some encouragement to the more sadistic warmongers among us. It has been called in the past a "problematic" quote, because it seems to contradict Jesus' best known teachings. Here is one of the web pages that have tried to explain it in a more rational way to fit in with the notion of a peace loving Jesus.

I have a warning for any warwongers who want fundamentalists on their side.  Fundamentalists do not fight to win, they fight to die and take as many people with them as possible to get their reward in heaven. And most of them do not even believe in the need to win a war, they believe only in the need to start a war.  They are happy to leave the finish of the war to God, and the Second Coming of Jesus. They say there are no atheists in a foxhole, but I would rather be in a foxhole with an atheist than with a fundamentalist who is waiting for the second coming.

Ignorance: It's what made us great.

A new form of ignorance is flooding the public areas that goes beyond the bounds of what used to pass for ignorance.

Last night I caught a clip on the Daily Show, where they showed a clip from Fox News (Recycling is great). A TV actor (star of the series "Coach") is ranting about how nobody takes responsibility for themselves any more.

Glenn Beck: "Are you saying that you personally won't pay income taxes any more?"
Craig T. Nelson "There are programs that they are asking me to fund that I refuse to fund. We are a capitalistic society. OK I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They don't bail me out. I've been on food stamps, on welfare. Anybody help me out? NO.No."

Huffington Post correctly points out that food stamps and welfare are both taxpayer funded assistance. Do you notice the sense of entitlement that this conservative displays, with no sense of obligation?

But I would like to add that bankruptcy protection is itself a way to get undeserved assistance. You borrow money, start a business, when it fails you declare bankruptcy, leaving the losses to others who will never be repaid. Meanwhile you are free to start again, until you do succeed. At which point, if you are at all deluded like Craig T. you can declare "I did it all by myself." And then say "no more paying taxes".

I would like to submit that conservatives who are this deluded, do not understand the realities of social and economic systems. These people probably should not be on TV, especially not the most watched news network in the USA. The economic system itself can be destroyed by spreading ignorance on this unprecedented scale.

Is the Customer Always Right?

The type of ignorance I'm referring to is not the occasional "I forget the name of the capital of Azerbaijan". I am referring to a type of in-your-face ignorance where people who know nothing are emboldened to step forward and state their incorrect opinions with arrogance that you rarely see in even a University professor teaching a class in their pet topic. There is no word yet in our language for this kind of ignorance. For now I will refer to it as viral ignorance.

It is not the educational system that spreads viral ignorance. I think one of the primary breeding areas for it is in retail shopping. The prevalent concept in America is "The Customer is Always Right". The entire retail commercial system is dedicated to enhancing ignorance, to giving stupidity a legitimacy of its own. Millions of people can safely practice spouting ignorance at humble store clerks, who are required to listen meekly to these opinions. Then of course, they go out in the world and become ignorant customers themselves. (Speaking of which, you should see the movie "Clerks" )

Here is a blog with contributions from many people from different countries, of interactions with customers. Some customers are just plain funny, but you can't go too far before coming across an advanced case of viral ignorance.

Check out this one in particular (on the subject of Canadian northern sovereignty, a topic dear to our Prime Minister's heart):

The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer should know when to just shut up.

Work Ethic vs Lazy Ethic

You may have often heard it said that the work ethic is what makes America/Canada/Lower Slobbovia great. This is bullshit of course. The driving force of industry and commerce always has been and always will be laziness.

It was all started by the very first hominid who suddenly decided "I'm tired of hunting woolly mammoths. Why don't I get some other guys to hunt the woolly mammoths for me? To reward them I'll give them half the meat!". That was the most profound idea ever hatched. Every other idea followed from that first one. Slavery for example, was not such a big step after that. In slavery, you give a quarter of the meat to the slave drivers (after all they don't really work, do they?) and keep 3/4 for yourself. The workers get nothing, as they are no longer working for reward, but to avoid punishment.

The driving force of the industrial revolution was inventing gadgets to do the work for you. Then you invent machines to build the gadgets to do the work for you.

Notice how all the really really highly paid people either don't work at all or do something questionable that doesn't really count as work? The bankers who collapsed the economy get bonuses of $100 million dollars a year. Sports stars get millions for playing sports. Rock starts get millions for playing songs. People who take out the garbage get nothing. People who build cars lose their jobs and their pensions. Farmers regularly end up paying out more than they take in. Their only reason for farming is to wait for the city boundary to swallow up their farm and then they can sit back and coast on the money.

The goal is not to be busy all the time, the goal is to make some other poor dumb bastard be busy all the time working for you (paraphrasing Gen. Patton.) So don't feel too sorry for me when you find out I'm retired and I do absolutely nothing at all. I have simply reached the Nirvana we have all been seeking since the original good idea 80,000 years ago.