About the Author
The prefix meta means beyond, through, around, over, under....etc. Choose your own preposition. Therefore metaevolution may be a conservative philosophy that says follow the principle of least action. It may be a liberal or progressive viewpoint that trumpets the triumphs of cooperation. It may be a pragmatic philosophy or a dogmatic one (it sometimes amazes me how scientists can be dogmatic...wtf?). This may help; think of evolution as poetry. Someone created the poetry with a definite meaning in mind. But by the act of reading the poetry, we create our own definition and apply it to our own lives. That's metaevolution!

If that's still unclear, here's another definition that didn't make the top ten list, but is probably the simplest and truest definition so far... Metaevolution is the process of humanity transforming into Deity...Enjoy   Read More »
I can't handle one more place to put my blog, my book reviews, and all that. So check out the sites I listed in my profile and find me there. To me, this is just for buying books.
Today, October 15, 2009 is Blog Action Day 2009. The topic is Climate Change. My entry follows.

Suppose you're on a luxury cruise ship (with no lifeboats) a thousand miles from anywhere.

While you're sipping your martini and sunbathing, an announcement blares over the loudspeaker. "This is your captain speaking. We've got a leak in the ship. We're all going to drown unless we get to the bottom deck and start hauling out the water as fast as it comes in. We need everyone's help!"

Being a sane, smart, non-suicidal person, you race to help, screaming for everyone else to do the same. On the way, you pass a batch of people still sunbathing. "Didn't you hear the captain?" you ask, liberally sprinkling your question with profanities too vile for this family-friendly blog.

They laugh at you. "That captain is full of crap. This ship isn't sinking."

What would you do? You could call them more vile profanities, but they are essential to your survival, so you'd want to use every manner of persuasion to get their help. You could kick them overboard so the ship had less to hold up, but that would waste time, which, according to the captain, is running out.

That's the challenge of Climate Change as allegory. Let's extract the meaning.

The captain represents the expert scientists who tell everyone there is a problem. You (starring as yourself) being sane, smart and non-suicidal, conclude the captain is an expert and knows what he's talking about. After all, you trust him to pilot the ship while you sleep, get drunk, watch bad dinner theater and marinate your privates in a hot tub alongside complete strangers and their privates. You're living every day with a trust that the skipper knows his stuff. It would be absurd to suddenly doubt his ability to judge the vessel's seaworthiness.

The arrogant deniers in the story represent, well, arrogant deniers.

I know, I know. We should respect others' opinions, but science isn't a question of preference or taste. Acknowledging Climate Change is a matter of everyone believing the experts that they rely on for everything else in their lives (scientists) from car safety to medicine to food production to whether or not a container labeled "microwave-safe" really is, on and on and on.

Can we please give scientists priority on matters of science?

Back in the day, I read science magazines a lot. I still do, though not as much. Back then (and now) all the science magazines spoke about global warming as a fact. The popular news didn't speak of it a peep. That changed when Al Gore hit the scene with An Inconvenient Truth and raised the alarm on Climate Change. Suddenly all the political (non-scientist) opponents of Mr. Gore, who have never ever discussed science in any depth, are speaking like Doctorates of Meteorology, claiming with absolute certainty that Climate Change is a hoax. I believe their dislike (or jealousy) of Al Gore has clouded their judgment.

This is what is so terrifying about Climate Change. We need everyone's participation to reverse, slow or mitigate its effects, but some people just can't stand the fact that Al Gore was the messenger. That's one psychological breakdown of Climate Change denial, but there are alternate explanations.

For example, the denial might be rooted in a disconnection with the earth and a lack of understanding of its connectedness. It's hard for short-sighted people who have never poked their heads beyond the confines of their own asses to worry about Climate Change. So what if an iceberg melts? They say. It doesn't affect my water supply. Who cares if honeybees die? I can always just go the store and get food.

Wouldn't it be great if someone wrote a book about this Earth-ignorant psychosis and titled it Where Did This Come From?

Whatever the reason for the denial, we need to overpower it. We all must appreciate the planet's fragility and act to protect it. Sadly, chucking deniers off the planet isn't possible, and we could use their help confronting global warming meaningfully.

Deniers, if Climate Change doesn't (at least to your perception) directly affect you now, it will. Look at it this way: if the planet floods and the atmosphere cooks, you won't be able to claim the moon landing was a hoax, or that Obama was born in Kenya, or that putting profit above health is a splendid idea, or hate liberal tree-huggers like me. You won't be able to do jack, because we'll all be dead. So can't we agree on this ONE thing, please? You can still hate me, just PLEASE stop denying Climate Change and work toward eliminating it with what you eat, what you drive and who you vote for.

That might go down in history as the most bizarre sales pitch ever, but in keeping with our nautical theme, I say "any port in a storm" because we need "all hands on deck."

A cruise ship without lifeboats may seem strange or contrived for the point of the fable, but I disagree. It's a perfect description for our one and only planet.

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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.
I can't remember the exact quote or who said it, but it invoked Zen along these lines: don't let praise go to your head and don't let criticism get you too uptight.

That's the attitude I always bring to awards announcements, whether I'm in the running or just observing. It doesn't matter if it’s the Emmys, the Grammys, the Oscars, the Pulitzer, the Nobel peace prize, or awards at my day job. I find I always come away from the winner announcements with the exact same three feelings.

  1. There's always someone I'm happy for, that I feel was rightly recognized.
  2. There's always someone I feel was neglected.
  3. There's always someone I feel completely undeserving who did win, causing my mind to be involuntarily filled with disturbing visions of the winner performing unholy sex acts upon the judging committee to secure victory.


With these pre-programmed reactions in place, news of Obama's Nobel peace prize victory moved me only slightly. I was glad his efforts at peace were recognized, as I would be for anyone, but I must confess my formidable eyebrows arched a bit at the idea of something called a "peace prize" being awarded to someone who is waging war. I also haven't forgotten that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize in 1973. Yes, he negotiated a cease-fire, but he also oversaw campaigns of murder in South America.

Back to Obama. I'm glad the win recognizes that he has achieved something simply by not being a flaming asshole like President Cheney and Figurehead Bush. I'm glad the award calls a global B.S. on their macho-swagger cliché: wherein men talk tough but dodge service, lead from the rear, mock those who serve, and whine when other countries won't help their war games.

My personal goal is to do what little I can to move humanity away from war, which is why I voted for Obama. Unfortunately, as much as he has spoken of peace, I haven't seen much action. Dude's barely been in office a year and things can't happen overnight, so I'll give him time, but after nearly a decade of chickenhawks, my patience is thin.

So awards don't affect me much, but what does move me to unrestrained laughter is the predictable-as-the-sunrise rage of the Obama-haters. I especially like when they are so rabid their hate signals get crossed. For example, they claim the award means nothing while simultaneously being outraged that Obama doesn't deserve it.

Here's an experiment. Next time someone rants about what a joke it is that Obama won the Nobel, ask that person who won it last year. Chances are, they'll have no idea. If they do, ask them if that person deserved it. Who knew that all this time, Obama-haters were also experts on Nobel history? Who knew they had such in-depth authoritative opinions on who it is awarded to, why it is awarded and what it means? What a strange coincidence!

Face it haters, you hate Obama. If the dude found a penny on the sidewalk, you'd be pissed. If he stepped on a dog turd, you'd claim it was sent by God to punish him.

Obama-haters, I hear your outcry about Obama's Nobel win. I just wish you had the same rabid reaction when Bush let Osama bin Laden escape and when Cheney handed his mercenary buddies your tax money to kill Iraqi civilians.

As mad as you are about Obama's peace prize, I wish you were at least that mad about war.


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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

 

Say what you want about President Obama, but he has done one thing very well. He has altered our national discussion. The big question of his term is: how to improve health care? What a refreshing change from the big question of the Bush years: how can we funnel even more money to the rich? Change has come! Instead of screwing up the entire planet, we've graduated to screwing ourselves.

 

Apparently change upsets a lot of people. This past summer, the usual round of breaking news (it's hot, it's really hot, it's not that hot) was completely pushed aside by footage from town hall meetings and demonstrations. Americans turned out in large numbers to let their opinions about Obama and his healthcare plan be known. This made for some disturbing video clips. (Like this, this, and this.)

 

Before you get discouraged by this ugliness, look on the bright side. The mayhem at the town halls proves we have at least a partly-functioning democracy. People are free to stand up in public and present views opposed to our country's leaders, opposed to the nation's majority and even opposed to any possible reality.

 

It's that last group I want to focus on, that cluster of people who see a national health care program as the sole intermediate step between where America is now and late-1930's Nazi Germany. If how a country makes a seamless transition from free prostate exams to mandatory gas chambers is a mystery to you, chances are you're sane. Or, according to supporters of the thesis, you've been duped.

 

Human history sadly never lacks stories of genocide, but for some reason the Nazi reign sticks in the American mind. Can a brother get an update? Nazis are so old-school. They've been replaced by Commies, then Russian Commies, then Warlords, then Terrorists. Official enemies come and go, but America's favorite bad guy remains the Nazis.

 

Maybe it's due to the perplexing question of how Nazi Germany came to exist at all. How did it happen? How did a country famous for something as harmless as beer and ridiculous as lederhosen become the most murderous, destructive force the world has ever seen not counting Wal-Mart?

 

I think the Obama-is-evil crazies provide the answer. See, everything happens for a reason, even nutty people showing up in public. Whackos have their uses, I guess.

 

Let me explain. What cracks me up, in a we're-all-doomed-so-laugh-or-you'll-cry kind of way, is that the people who scream Nazi the loudest, who call people Nazis the most, are also the people who act most similar to the Nazis, or are at least the most ready to become American neo-Nazis. Let's call them Americanazis and compare.

 

The original Nazis believed without question the fact-free ravings of a leader with access to major media, perpetual rage, and dubious sanity. Americanazis do too (Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh). The original Nazis believed the big lie: Jews were taking over, and if you didn't see evidence of it, it's because they were so skilled at hiding their schemes. The Americanazis believe Obama's healthcare plan and his every action (talking to schoolkids, planting a garden, playing basketball, etc.) are secret plans of evil and if it seems to your observation to be otherwise, that's because he is so skilled at hiding his nefariousness. Nazis were told they were under attack and they believed it (as explained by Goering in his famous quote on how to start a war). Americanazis are told they are oppressed and under attack, and they believe it as well. Reference the ludicrous War on Christmas and the perpetual warnings against liberals, education, the media, political correctness, as well as many other dastardly abstract nouns.

 

So maybe all of that can be overlooked, but what makes Americanazis prime candidates as Nazi re-enactors is their disturbing sexual attraction to firearms. That completes the Nazi package: crazy leaders, gullibility, anger, paranoia and guns.

 

How did Nazi Germany arise? There were some key angry cult-leaders stoking a bunch of scared and willing-to-put-anger-before-thought believers. Before long, people are committing horrible evil acts because they are convinced they are doing so against horrible evil people.

 

Nazis always think they're fighting the Nazis. It's the eternal wisdom of "whoever smelt it dealt it" scaled to address the psychoses of the terrified, gullible, angry, armed, hate-prone demographic.

 

Nazis always think they're fighting the Nazis. Prove me wrong. When you fail, you know what to call me.

 

UPDATE: Mere seconds before I posted this, I ran across this disturbing story: Right-Wing Conference Tells Activists To Get Their Guns Ready For ‘Bloody Battle’ With Obama The Nazi (link) which neatly proves my point. The Winner of the "Most Likely To Be The Next Nazis" award is... the gang accusing others of being Nazis. 

 

===
Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

Right wingers, justifiably angry at the massive middle-class decline, are protesting health care reform lately. It is a triumph of corporate media that they are opposing their own self-interest, and arguing that the corporate market is a better form of organization than democratically elected government.  

 

U.S. healthcare is the most expensive in the world, outcomes are only slightly better than Cuba's, a large fraction of the population is not covered. It is a major cause of personal and corporate bankruptcies. It is important for the economy and the well being of everyone. Since few jobs are secure now, no one should have to question the need for change.

 

The insurance industry runs healthcare with obscene CEO compensation, profligate lobbying, massive political payoffs, and a large expensive bureaucracy. You have no way to know if your coverage is adequate until you make a claim.  They can drop you.

 

What does the insurance industry do? It rations, but not in a good way. It excludes sick people (with pre-existing conditions), cherrypicks the healthiest, and caps payments.  It is in conflict of interest because its goal is profit, not healthcare efficacy. Other than irrational rationing and bureaucracy, the insurance industry contributes nothing to actual healthcare except high premiums.

 

If you are an individual or small business, coverage now costs you plenty and is likely to increase rapidly. The wingers would rather pay high premiums to insurers than taxes to a more cost effective public program.

 

Shut down the health insurers. Retrain the insurance bureaucracy for jobs in actual health care because if everyone is covered there will be a need to expand facilities. Expand Medicare, which works well and is more cost effective, to cover everyone. Urge Congress to direct the CBO to score HR 676 and publish the results. http://www.seconnecticut.com/healthcare_letter.htm

 

Blue Dog Democrats proudly let you know how they have weakened the public option, if it makes it at all to the President's desk. The Republican proudly let you know that they have put their feet in the sand on single payer and the public option. They also boast about the anti-healthcare reform people who prevent other Americans from hearing out and addressing their veryu own representatives in a public forum. The Administration is putting their feet in the sand by stating what their priorities are for health care (now health insurance) reform, but as soon as the progressives come out and openly state they will not vote for any bill that doesn't have a strong public options and liberal groups begin running ads against these so called "Blue Dogs" suddenly the President sicks Rahm Emanuel on them talkin' about how progressives should not target these democrats. I say that they should PUT THEM RIGHT ON THE FRONT PAGE! Find people in each of their districts with horror stories from insurance companies that dropped them or refused them coverage at the most devestating time in their lives and then explain how much money that insurance company CEO is making. Let the people know that their congressman/woman supports that CEO and the system that he has purchased from Repuplicans and some Democrats and let the people decide what side they are on. UncleJTPA
"This bill will KILL (old) People." This is the rhetoric that the right uses after they allege that taking care of the health of U.S. citizens is socialism. We respond with talking about 14000 people lose their coverage periodically or 1,000,000 go bankrupt every year and there are 50,000,000 people without health care and millions more with healthcare that is inadequate or won't be there when they need it." What does that MEAN?!" Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing! The story is human. Tell IT! Republicans tell you what they believe a public option will do. "It will KILL people." That is scary. and visceral. Why don't progressive politicians get people right from their district and put them right on CNN and MSNBC with their horror stories of losing a wife or husband who suffered miserably before DYING and being buried and maybe leaving the surviving spouse bankrupt or in most serious debt? How about the 12 year old (Deamonte Driver) kid in Maryland who died from a toothache in 2007. I don't see President Obama or any Democrat putting his mother on the front page of the newspaper or giving her a spot with them on some news show. Tell how he had a rotting tooth that needed to be extracted at a cost of about $80. Since the so called "system" that is bought and paid for by big pharma and insurance left gaps big enough for him to fall in he couldn't get treated and the bacteria spread to his brain. So he then got a surgery that cost over $200,000 (I wonder who paid for that) that proved unsucessful. He died. He is DEAD now...Right Now! It's over. He isn't "projected" to die. He wasn't an "old" person. I am not predicting that he will die. His Mother put the child in the cemetery and I wouldn't doubt if the U.S. Taxpayers footed the $200,000 tab for the surgery that was too late. (That I can't prove though, but you know if he didn't have $80 he surely didn't have $200,000.) There was a Democratic Congressman talking about someone in his district one day on the Hill in some meeting and this constituent, this man, had lost his wife and son, and I believe it was due to some shananagans with this so called "system." Why don't Dem's take that off of CPAN and put it on prime time and find that same or similar story in every district in the nation. They are out there. Going to the cemetery IS the cost of this current system. Forget about 1 trillion dollars, 50,000,000 uniinsured and blah, blah, blah,. People are dying, being permanently injured, going bankrupt, losing their very dignity, health, and life and companies that put big money in the pockets of politicians are getting fat stupid RICH off of it and that is FOUL, CROOKED, STUPID, and CRIMINAL! That is the cost and those are the terms! Stop talking in numbers. TELL STORIES! You don't have to guess, predict, prognosticate, generate, project. Just tell the stories that are true, historical, already in the books, without dispute, and show the tears of the loved ones left behind or the wrecked mental, emotional, physical, and financial lives of some of the very victims of this FOUL so called system. This is a down right dirty SHAME and that is how you talk about it. Statistics don't punch people in the stomach and chest and knock the very wind out of their lungs. 12 year old kids dying from toothaches in the richest country on the earth and going to the cemetery while over a million dollars a day is being spent by the very same companies and people who created and profit from the system that sent him too early to his grave. That is just FOUL! THAT is what you SAY! If you don't then you're just talkin' but not SAYIN' anything that means anything...Sorry.
UncleJTPA
So there's some trouble after the Iranian election. Silly democratic amateurs! They should learn from us Americans. We've been rocking democracy for 200-plus years, so we know how to do it right.

Psst! Bush v. Gore? Oops. Psst! The Franken-Coleman race? Double oops.

Okay! Okay! So maybe we Americans aren't that great at democracy, but at least we like to think we are, and it's the thought that counts, right? Damn, don't we get any credit just for believing?

We get so proud when we see democracy flourish in other countries, voters smiling for the cameras and showing their stained fingers! Hey wait a minute… why are they staining the middle finger? We love to see foreign democracies, until we realize the guy voted in hates us as much as the guy voted out.

Call me cynical, call me paranoid... and you'd be right, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong when I have a sinking feeling that I've already read the spoilers for made-for-TV Iran election drama.

It just strikes me as extremely convenient that a country the USA and most Western nations officially dislike, a nation they simply cannot stop from pursuing nuclear power (and nuclear weapons) is plunged into chaos during an election.

What reason do I have to doubt the official version? It's plausible enough. Maybe most Iranians are embarrassed that their face to the world, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is portraying them like ignorant, war-hungry morons. I'm sure there was someone like that as our president once.

Or maybe, just maybe, the current strife in Iran is just another example in a long line of clandestine US and CIA manipulation. (Reference Chile, Iran 1953, Cuba, Grenada, and on...)

A recent pundit cliché these days is, America has lost its moral authority. I don't know if they know what they mean by that, I suspect they've been infected by the meme, and it seems weighty and profound. I'll try to be more articulate. What it means when America loses its moral authority is that it's hard to believe that America inspires democracy instead of just inspiring its appearance, while actually subverting it.

The USA wanted regime change in Iran. Then after an election in Iran, the incumbent claims victory and opposition candidates cry foul. Wow! That sure was a lucky break for the USA!

Cynics everywhere are placing bets on which alternate ending we're going to watch: will the US pull a "Bay of Pigs" and not be there for the puppet? Or will they execute (pun?) a "Pinochet in Chile" and be there for the victor even if he proves to be a war criminal? Opposition candidates in Iran must know (or were told) they will be treated as heroes if they remove the thorn from the West's collective toe.

The CIA can't lose here. Installing a puppet isn't even essential. Chaos is a sufficient end. If you can whip up enough protest, whether founded (as when Bush "won" Florida by the Supreme Court ending a recount) or unfounded (Obama's non-existent birth certificate that actually does exist) you can attempt to deprive the official winner of legitimacy, and fill their term with late night monologue jokes, talk radio rants and extremely un-witty spam about how they didn't really win.

On the Iran situation, President Obama has even tried some philosophical flanking by stating that his response to the crisis is muted because he doesn't want anyone to think the USA is meddling. Now why would we think that?

So what's a concerned American to do? Twitter your ideas for subversion furiously or hope the anti-USA guy wins if that's what Iranians want? Wait a sec, if the Iranian leader is pro-America isn't that good for me since I'm an American? Should I care about genuine elections in Iran, or just care about what's good for me? Are we witnessing democracy in action? Or more stoking by the CIA?

Is it real? Is it fake? I don't know. I allow myself the luxury of no commitment to any belief. Ahhhh… very nice.

Here's what I'm sure of: the photos and news coming from Iran are very disturbing, what appears to be police attacking peaceful demonstrations. If they don't knock that off, I'm going to be putting aside my skepticism for some good down-home righteousness. I hope you find peace Iran, inside and with the Western governments.

I'd like for my country to get along with Iran, and I'd like their leader to be someone Iranians want elected. Lastly, I'd like a snack that has the great taste of a potato chip with the same nutritional value as broccoli.

===
Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

Since people tend to think in labels, most of them are surprised that I, being labeled a liberal (meaning I put caring about others at a high priority) have read and enjoyed books by Ayn Rand, herself being labeled conservative (meaning she puts caring about oneself at a high priority.) This fact often makes my fellow labeled-liberals gag.

Yes, I've read and enjoyed Ms. Rand's books, including Anthem, Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead. I think I may have even tried her book The Virtue of Selfishness, but I bailed before completion. Call me virtuous.

For those who don't know squat about Ayn Rand, she's the patron saint of free market, zero taxes, individualist philosophy. When I say she's the patron saint, I mean that in its fullest sense. She's just as extreme and just as wrong in many of her assessments of the world as the people that worship her.

There is some intelligence in her endless warnings against too much forced behavior on behalf of society. I know giving her one sliver of credit will make some of my fellow liberals have a stroke, but I've always felt it best to extract wisdom wherever you can.

As an example, her book The Fountainhead is moving to any struggling artist. It's about an architect who is visionary and uncompromising. As a result, he is blacklisted, having to fight his way into the profession with heroic determination. Leaving aside Rand's inaccurate formula that "the masses" are always wrong and the individual always right, I enjoyed this book as simply an underdog story. It's inspiring for an author in search of an agent with the vision to release the genius of his blockbuster novel. That author would be me, by the way, in case that analogy blew past ya.

So that's my analysis of Ayn Rand: as an artistic philosophy, somewhat inspiring. As a social-political-economic philosophy, I'm unmoved.

The Ayn Rand novel I want to talk about most is Atlas Shrugged because I think its misguided views are backing a lot of modern opinion. In the book, the richest, most powerful men in the world have had enough of being taxed so they shut down their companies and thereby shut down the world. The whole planet plunges into chaos until this titans return.

This explains the title. It's a spin on the myth. Atlas gets sick of carrying around the world, of people freeloading off his effort. So he dumps the planet and everyone suffers.

The plot is laughable. Why? Because what would happen today if a worker walked off the job and said "I'm not working for you anymore?" The instant this earth-bound Atlas mentioned he might "shrug," he'd be notified that his services were no longer required and he was being replaced (for one-tenth the price) by a desperate immigrant escaping some war-torn country.

Of course, if the exiting person was a CEO he would probably reap a huge bonus on his way out, but ultimately the world wouldn't stop, it wouldn't even blink.

In short, if Atlas shrugged, his job would get outsourced. He'd be lucky if he could find even an asteroid to carry around afterwards.

Well what if an Atlas-like CEO actually owned the company and decided to take it elsewhere? Sure that would damage a lot of people's financial lives, but that illustrates that the existence of all-powerful individuals makes the world unsafe for other individuals. Ultimately, people have no choice but to band together (via society, or unions, or taxes) to prevent simply living at the whim of the wealthy (reference the at-will employee.)

I never really gave much thought to the magnitude of Ms. Rand's wrongness until I was working at a place that desperately needed a union, which I voted for, and which was enacted. We could all have been the fiercest individuals in the world, but the very existence of those who control everything would have stopped us from pursuing our own individual goals. An individual cannot possibly make a reasonable request against a company that is treating them unfairly.

I'm tempted to call Ms. Rand naïve, but I will refrain because she does not have the benefit (as we do) of several decades of watching her ideas being applied.

The root of the error in Ms. Rand's worldview and its modern descendants is that they rely on a miracle of emergence. The core belief is that by encouraging everyone to grab everything they can with no regard for anyone else, somehow the world will become the best possible place for everyone. It's like the dying (dead?) idea of "trickle-down" economics: give to the rich as much as you possibly can and then somehow, this will result in more money for the poor.

The real tragedy of Ayn Rand is that she doesn't seem to notice that by pursuing a world where the rich are in full control and don't owe the society that enabled them to prosper a darn thing, an individual's rights end up stifled. By advocating boundless individualism, she denies opportunity to other individuals who may be born to poorer families.

So there is an emergent result from her philosophy, just not the kind she wanted.

Okay, this is all getting complex and grey, and that's where Ayn Rand's extreme philosophy (where any extreme philosophy) breaks down: when it leaves the realm of contrived fiction and enters the real world.

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Larry Nocella's novel Where Did This Come From? is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

 

Note to readers: Progressive Book Club's blog -- new and improved -- has moved here. Please bookmark it and/or subscribe to the feed -- and of course, tell us what you think.

 

Outside the Window: June 1, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudless and sunny.

Inside the Book: 2003. Losano Ridge, Afghanistan. A few miles from the Pakistani border. Late summer. Colder during the day. Freezing at night.

            “The unforgiving minute” of Mullaney’s title has arrived. While they rush to protect a patrol under attack, Mullaney’s soldiers trigger two more ambushes. The first kills a young man named Evan O’Neill.

   Read More »

Outside the Window: May 29, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudy and cool. Maybe some storms tonight.

Inside the Book: 2003. Ghazni and Shkin, Afghanistan. Hot. Tense.

            In a 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, Milton Bearden (CIA station chief in Pakistan between 1986 and 1989) dubbed Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” The Soviets had tried and failed to pacify it. A century earlier, the British fought three costly wars on the same terrain before retreating. Two millennia before that, Alexander the Great barely escaped with his life. Only Genghis Kahn had any luck incorporating the tribes into his empire, and according to Bearden, even he had to make “painful accommodations with the Afghans.” The initial invasions sometimes went pretty well, with foreign armies marching into cities and setting up puppet governments. But then, little by little, ambush by ambush…

   Read More »

We're thrilled to announce today that Gov. Howard Dean has joined Progressive Book Club as board chairman! The governor, who has just written a book on health care reform to be published later this summer, needs no introduction, but below he explains why he took the position and why he believes, as we do, that books and ideas are are vitally important to the progressive movement even -- make that especially -- in the digital age.

Dear Progressive,

It’s an honor to join the Board of Directors of the Progressive Book Club. PBC has transformed the traditional book club and created a 21st century platform that enables people who want to learn, connect, debate, support progressive causes and take action. Over the past few years, progressives have worked together to build an infrastructure and a movement that helped to elect President Obama and begin to undo the damage of the last eight years.

PBC has become a critical part of that infrastructure. I believe that as Democrats and Progressives our values are core American values. And just as we must show up and ask for people’s votes everywhere, we must also engage and stand up for our ideas and our values everywhere. In books, in our neighborhoods, or online. In the past, we lacked the infrastructure to provide a broad platform that continuously identifies and cultivates progressive ideas and new voices, while empowering people to debate, connect and mobilize around these ideas. ... Read more.

 

Outside the Window: May 27, 2009. New York, New York. Clouds and misting rain.

Inside the Book: 2003. Gardez, Afghanistan. Dust and "one hundred twenty-eight in the shade, sir."

        So far, Mullaney's portrayal of the military has been almost uniformly positive. His superior officers especially are, to a man, tough and competent. At West Point, Airborne training, and Ranger School, they provided everything he needed, both the equipment and the know-how. In Afghanistan Mullaney confronts scarcity for the first time and, though he never says so explicitly, shockingly poor planning.

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Paper has been getting it's ass kicked lately. The conventional wisdom is that video screens are the death of paper. If you have an electronic device, you just download the info and you're done, there's (supposedly) no need to harm any trees.

As usual here in the offices of LarryNocella.com, I'd like to take a step back and review the "conventional wisdom" from an unusual angle. I find the screen vs. paper debate comparable to the Christmas tree debate.

I'm not referring to the perennial news stories about people spazzing because a Christmas tree isn't allowed on public property, causing them to lament the intolerant, especially at this time of year, since everyone is a Christian. I'm also not referring to the laughably manufactured War On Christmas™.

The Christmas tree debate that I think will shed some funky disco lights on the paper vs. screens discussion is about what kind of Christmas tree is better: a real one or a fake one made of plastic and metal.

Where I live, following Christmastime, you can count on finding defrocked Christmas trees tossed on the side of the road. It's annoying. What a waste to cut down a perfectly healthy tree for a short amount of time and then just chuck on the street where it withers away. Why didn't the person dispose of it properly, or even toss it into the woods?

This led me to be fully in favor of the fake (plastic and metal) Christmas tree. You can reuse it and you don't need to cut down any trees.

My view was changed after reading a letter to the editor in a newspaper. Was paper calling to me? The letter (I can't remember the newspaper or I would note it) rocked my world. It made this point: "Real trees are better than fake ones. Eventually the fake one is going to a landfill. Real trees can be used for firewood or composted."

Now I know why Rush Limpballs is so angry all the time! It hurts to be wrong.

Real trees are better, environmentally-speaking. A real tree can be returned to the earth. Ultimately some amount or all of a fake tree goes to a landfill. With minimal effort, a real tree can return to the earth to feed more trees.

Now let's look at paper vs. screens.

At first glance, cell phones and eBook readers like the Amazon Kindle seem like environment-savers: you never have to cut down a single tree to make paper for books, magazines or newspapers ever again. What a blessing! Well, it would be if a combination of plastic, metal and assorted hazardous materials simply appeared out of the air and vanished once obsolete.

In theory you buy one electronic gadget and you're done for life. But that never happens. Microsoft or some other jerk organization that claims they don't have a monopoly but really does makes some upgrades and soon your device is so obsolete it simply won't work. You need to buy a new one. The old one may take a circuitous route through eBay, but ultimately it's landfill stuffing.

The takeaway: don't write paper off just yet. When assessing how good something is for the environment, we have to consider not only what it takes from the earth but how easily it can return. Real trees beat fake trees, paper beats screens easily, super-convenient cell phones are upset by their whipping boys, the phonebook.

So now that I've presented a case for paper, we can all acknowledge there is a lot of paper waste going on. It has been noted that electronic spam isn't just a nuisance, it's wasteful of energy that could go to powering millions of homes. I have to think paper spam is even more destructive. Every week I get a packet of flyers from the same old stores I don't go to.

Spam (paper or electronic) needs to be outlawed, but it will likely never be, because that would put people out of work. Maybe screens and paper should stop fighting and acknowledge they both can be part of the solution. Waste needs to stop all around.

The whole media delivery and receipt world needs to be re-thought. The idea of an electronic device is cool, but not if (as seems to happen) the device goes obsolete every five seconds. The cost of something should figure in how it's going to get back into the earth. You should be able to completely opt-out of spam paper mail, too.

Like that annoying true proverb, it sounds like a lot of challenges, but it's a lot of opportunity to treat our home right.

===
Larry Nocella's novel Where Did This Come From? is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.

 

Jane Mayer's The Dark Side is the definitive account of how the Bush administration's "War on Terror" turned into a war on American ideals. Here she tells PBC how this came to pass, and at what cost -- both to America's standing and to those tortured in the name of national security.

Outside the Window: May 20, 2009. New York, New York. Sunny and nearly cloudless.

Inside the Book: 2001-2002. Muscogee and Chattahoochee Counties, Georgia. Unbearable heat. Jefferson County, New York. Knuckle-splitting cold.

            While reading about Mullaney’s final months of training, I thought of George Orwell—not the middle-aged idealist who went to Spain and fought the fascists in Homage to Catalonia but the middle-aged grump who returned to England and wrote “Politics and the English Language.” In the latter, Orwell argues that vague language has a definite political purpose: it makes the indefensible palatable. Instead of calling (oh, let’s pick an example at random) the act of shackling a man’s arms above his head for two or three days until his legs and ankles swell to grotesque and painful size torture, we might call it an “enhanced interrogation technique.”

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Outside the Window: May 14, 2009. New York, New York. Cloudy and cool.

Inside the Book: 2000-2001. Oxford, England. Continual rains and mists. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Chiang Mai, Thailand. Giza, Egypt. Jerusalem, Israel. Istanbul, Turkey. Crowded and confusing.

            I’m now halfway through The Unforgiving Minute, and Mullaney still hasn’t left for Afghanistan. As I read, this began to wear on me. Although his travel writing nicely captures the sheer weirdness of globalization (in Bangkok, “…an elephant walked past sporting a blinking taillight suspended from its tail … one woman who had parked her ox-driven cart on the street came back with a bucket of chicken from KFC.”), Mullaney is a soldier, and it’s his growth as a soldier, not as a citizen of the world, that brought me to the book.

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Here's our latest video interview -- it's with Rinku Sen, co-author, with Fekkak Mamdouh, of The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization (available for $1 when you join PBC). Click on the HD button for the best quality picture -- and enjoy!

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