I have no wish to distract the members of this community from the efforts it is engaged in at this time. I recognize the urgent nature of the current situation, but despite the fact that I am arguably in violation of certain rules of conduct by which I am expected to abide, I wish to offer some observations in the hope that they will prove helpful.
Additional information is presented below the fold.
I find that I concur with the prevailing sentiment in this community that this represents a critical point in your country's history. The emotionalism that is evident here is, while admittedly given to some particularly distasteful turns, is understandable - it could best be described as endemic to "human nature."
I would submit, however, that as this exercise by which your political leadership is suggested enters its final days, you should be conscious of the liability this can easily represent.
I remind you that you, yourselves, repeatedly refer to yourselves as the "reality-based community." I find this encouraging, and I would encourage you all to bear this in mind as this exercise nears its conclusion and, to employ an idiom, "keep your eyes on the prize."
With that in mind, let us examine the origin of the phrase by which you, to your credit, self-identify: "Reality-based community."
One of your country's journalists reported this exchange with an aide to your country's political leader:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
I am basically a scientist. Clarity of formulation is essential in my profession. Consider the fundamentally irrational nature of the foregoing statement. The anonymous staff member quoted in the foregoing speakes disdainfully of the value of a thought process based upon a "judicious study of discernible reality."
Insufficient facts always invite danger. Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth - or by misleading the innocent. Without followers, evil cannot spread.
One of your philosophers is an object of controversy in your community. Without engaging in a detailed dissection of this person's work, I will make reference to her thoughts here becasue they are germane to the issue. This woman was actually a native of a country that was at one time your nation's greatest adversary. She wrote under the assumed name of Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand defined the word "rational" as meaning a decision arrived at by means of the process of reason. She in turn, defined "reason" as that faculty in the human mind which identifies and integrates the material provided by one's senses.
Madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal.
The disconnect from rational thought evident in the words of the Bush staffer quoted above, I would remind you, is ultimately that thing against which your struggle is directed. I would encourage, even exhort you, if I may, to bear this in mind. And I "exhort" very infrequently.
"The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God.If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."
This quote, from a book titled "Letter To A Christian Nation" provides, in my view, another invaluable insight into the basic nature of the force which you correctly perceive as not only a detriment, but a grave threat to the development of your society.
"According to Abbas, Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.'"
To reiterate, and express agreement with the writer quoted above: the inclusion or omission of the hairdryer is irrelevant to the fundamentally irrational nature of the thought process of the political figures that control your government.
I find encouraging the recent developments highlighting the harmful and counterproductive nature of allowing a collective metaphysic to influence public policy through an effect on your body politic.
'Fascinating' is a word I use for the unexpected.
Admittedly, this turn of affairs is emotionally painful to many members of your society. I would submit that, as a child learns that we must not touch a candle's flame, this pain is instructive, and a necessary part of your society's development.
Pain is a thing of the mind. The mind can be controlled.
While I am cognizant of the fact that you are not, at this time, engaged in the selection of a President, you are, as I am sure you are aware, in a position to implement a check upon this President's behavior by greatly reducing the influence of the political party to which he is allegiant.
The key to the success of this exercise in these final days is to remain cohesive and to not permit emotionalism to divide you. Division is the province of the adversary you face.
One factor that is driving the influence emotion has on your efforts is, ironically, science: that discipline known as the study of statistics. All of you who participate in this "Daily Kos" community in particular, as well as the conventional wisdom in your society at large,
are aware that statistically, the total domination of your country's political structure is about
to come to an end.
Again, I am bound by strictures that proscribe me from discussing certain aspects of your situation, particularly those which concern the perspective from which I speak. But at the risk of being perhaps accused of violating this restriction, I would say to you that the odds of the situation resolving in this fashion are actually greater than you are being permitted to know by your government, as well as your journalistic apparatus, upon which your government has an unhealthy degree of influence.
It is for this reason that you must not allow yourselves to be distracted by emotionalism.
Recently, a long-standing member of your community published a work expressing extreme anger at statements made by both your political party's leading figure in the lower house of your legislative branch, as well as the creator of this community that is based within your global computer network.
The degree of anger displayed by the writer of this article was understandable given the passion of this community's members, as well as its relatively large number of active participants. What I found troubling was the ardor with which this contributor was attacked for expressing his views as strongly as he did.
That said, please remain focused on the fact that your country's basic principles, not the least or the lone among them being clear and open discourse, are being suborned by its political leaders, and that same emotionalism is the means by which they implement this, by exploiting your collective fears in a number of ways you should not need my assistance to understand.
One of your country's greatest journalists made a statement that you should bear in mind as proof against the psychological tactics employed by your political leadership in its efforts to retain control.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
The same man also is said to have said:
When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
Although the man who spoke these words is no longer among you, there is a journalist of repute who has chosen consciously to emulate him. He has selected an extremely commendable role model, and is doing great credit to this man's memory. I would stongly encourage that you,the "loyal opposition", support this commentator, and pay heed to his words. It would be my hope that he would inspire others to follow the example that he sets by the example that he follows.
In a rather odd set of circumstances that I will not at this time detail, I once heard the writings which begin to define the nature of your nation distorted beyond recognition
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by those who did not understand them.
You now, as you are aware, face a situation wherein the principles those words represent, as well as the laws contained within the greater body of writing which they preface, are being subverted, rendered impotent or irrelevant, and brazenly ignored by those who do understand them: your political leadership.
It would be illogical to assume that all conditions remain stable.
Your "FISA laws"(Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them), and by extension the Fourth Amendment to your Constitution, as well as other Constitutional concepts such as habeas corpus, posse comitatus, separation of church and state, along with respect for the laws of war and the treatment of prisoners - indeed, a plethora of your basic rights are being sacrificed upon the altar of the fear and division by which your leaders gain the populace's acquiescence to these egregious violations of the core principles that comprise your society's identity. They know that people are easily divided by fear, and that a divided people are easiest to control.
I implore you not to allow emotionalism to divide this community. You have seen there is much you can accomplish as a unified front. In any case, were I to invoke logic, logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one.
And that factor which will unite the reality-driven among your country's people, in its infinite diversity in infinite combinations, is a commitment to the ideal that is key among the concepts that your nation was founded upon: the unshakable conviction that all are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, and that chief among these are life, liberty....
and yes, the pursuit of happiness.
Happiness (of the enduring sort): an emotion that results from one being satisfied that the circumstances of life contribute to longevity and prosperity - the combination of a number of things to make existence worthwhile.
The single emotion which, in my view, the pursuit of could indeed be said to be logical.
Life and death are seldom logical.
But attaining a desired goal always is.
There are always alternatives.
The victory you seek is yours to achieve. Do not allow yourselves to become your own adversaries. You have adversaries enough. I wish you success in your endeavour.
Live long and prosper,"Kossacks", and finally:
Good night, and good luck.