Any kind of study on the functionality of individuals, society, and governments has to deal with the area of compassion. As we have learned over the past 70+ years of the New Deal, compassion is essential for governments, society, and individuals to function. Without it, people will have no stake even if Dennis Kucinich were running for office. Without it, people would be killing and being killed, and society would not function as people would be quarreling over little things. Without it, people cannot be happy in this life. Nietzsche himself said that people have to operate based on consequences, and the consequences in this case are clear enough.
Continuing our full-fledged assault on Christian Fundamentalism (by which I mean the right-wing orthodoxy that has permeated the world), we make forays into some more of Nietzsche's work. First of all, we discuss his work, "Beyond Good and Evil."
Fundamentalism has codes of conduct that have served humanity for the last two centuries. But the problem is that in more cases than not, it has served as a restriction as to what we can and can't do and has prevented us from reaching our potential.
Nietzsche laid out a full-fledged assault on the basis of fundamentalism and called for the reevaluation of everything that we would think of as moral and right. And a similar reevaluation is totally called for thanks to eight years of abuse of power by the Bush administration, the cumulation of forces interested only in appropriating wealth and power to themselves at the expense of the common person.
Plato talked about the Noble Lie that he said that rulers must maintain in order to keep social cohesion. In other words, in order for a group of people to build an identity as a nation, they must center themselves around a common narrative, even if it involves a noble lie. And these sorts of noble lies have been told throughout history. The church told the noble lie of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in order to create conformity.
The narrative of the founding of America has been a noble lie -- the illusion that our leaders had freedom's best interests at heart. But what the Bush administration has done over the last eight years has been no different than what our country has been doing for the last 200 -- torturing, wiretapping, and committing war crimes in the name of freedom.
While this may be a short-term solution to our problems (oil dropped $10 a barrel today), what evidence is there that drilling will provide a long-term solution to our problems? And why not use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and pass laws improving oversight of the petroleum markets?
If we are to learn a lesson from the FISA struggle, it is that the louder we yell, the less Obama will listen to us. Paradoxically, the calmer we are, the more likely Obama will listen to us. Roger Cohen wonders why Barack Obama left Richard Holbrooke off of his foreign policy team. But he winds up answering his own question in his column. The lessons from that are important to take home.
Everybody has wondered when Obama was going to push back against the flip-flop meme that the media was tarring and feathering him with. Paul Krugman today went so far as to suggest that it had Rove's fingerprints written all over them. But Obama has begun pushing back against the flip-flop meme by releasing a fact sheet on Iraq. The fact sheet points out that Obama has the same positions on Iraq now that he did several months ago. You can read the fact sheet here.
Who the fuck does John McCain think he is, claiming that the Presidency is somehow his divine right while his fellow veterans are bleeding and suffering? He can brag all he wants to about purpose, as he does in his latest ads, yet the McCain Doctrine is drifting along without purpose while more and more people are dying and suffering in Iraq.
Today, Senator Obama spoke about his plan to bring money to faith-based programs. And while there is no doubt that many of these programs work and Obama would do a much more even-handed job of getting them money than Bush ever did, he also talked about faith and our obligations to help others. In that regard, Obama has set standards for himself to follow.
Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.
As part of a larger plan for a diversified, clean energy future, Barack has proposed doubling research funding for clean energy projects such as solar power while requiring that 25% of electricity consumed in the U.S. be derived from clean, sustainable energy sources by 2025.
What we should do is simple -- put a wind or solar farm in every town, and we'll see how much clean energy we can generate in this country. And we'll watch the tax base grow right along with it, along with new jobs.
The choice in this election is clear -- a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for the people. A vote for John McCain is a vote for special rights for corporations. In John McCain's twisted worldview, he would support government by the corporation for the corporation. Meanwhile, back in the real world, our country was set up to be a government by the people and for the people. And here are the graphic consequences of antitax extremism:
John McCain did it again. This time, he claimed to support every call for an investigation into the Katrina tragedy. But it turns out that he lied because he conveniently forgot that he opposed a Democratic proposal to set up a 9/11-style commission to investigate the causes of the tragedy.
