Not Even Wrong

Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize winning physicist, the Pauli in the Pauli Exclusion Principle, as the tale is told, once succinctly reviewed a young physicist's paper, saying sadly, "That's not right; it's not even wrong."  I heard a soundbyte of Bush on the Beeb yesterday, and those three words said themselves to me with my own mouth. Not even wrong. Almost every statement that comes out of Howdy Dubya is so dumb and delusional that his assertions (pre-programed or otherwise) do not even rise to the level of being wrong. Not falsifiable, as Karl Popper put it; not susceptible to proof, because the proposition has no testable hypothesis. The Decider doesn't have a plan or a goal, much less a strategy, he has articles of faith so slippery that they can explain any fact and elude any test.

People speak of framing the debate on the war; that we must change the frame, that is to say, we must alter the rhetoric and metaphors of political discourse in our favor, ala George Lakoff. We must substitute, insinuate, and impose our memes such that we replace the Republican frame with a Democratic frame. That's OK as far as it goes. We are all soldiers on the field of memes. But a frame is just a frame; it may largely and elaborately distract from, subtly direct attention to a particular aspect of, or complement the essence of the picture; but the picture is still the same picture no matter what the frame. It's the same picture if it has no frame at all. And the picture we're looking at is ugly. It's so ugly people can't bear it. We can't face our shame. No one is putting a frame on this picture, we're all putting a good coat of whitewash on the picture so we don't have to look at it. We don't want to look in the mirror and see ourselves as we truly are. Dubya, like Tom Sawyer, is standing by and collecting our treasures one by one, as we each take our turn with the sopping brush.

Every day I listen to NPR and the BBC World Service. I read the blogs, sometimes even WaPo or other MSM. If I pinched myself every time I thought, "I can't believe that Bush is President, it just can't be this bad," I'd be covered with so many welts I could get a job exhibiting myself at a freakshow as "The Pincher." I feel like I am living in some alternate reality, but that hypothesis is not testable.

Another soundbyte that has got a lot of play is John Boehner's tearful

"After 3,000 of our fellow citizens died at the hands of these terrorists, when are we going to stand up and take them on? When are we going to defeat 'em?"

That is not the pertinent question. Rather ask, "When are we going to stand down from these people?"

We already got us right where they want us. Some Republican or other, I can't recall who, had the absolute, fatuous arrogance to assert that we will see the light at the end of the tunnel, come September. The conventional riposte is, "Yeah, and it's the headlight of an oncoming train." There is no light. We're groping in black void, hoping to find a wall, and to feel our way to the opening of a tunnel. The tunnel has already left the station.

Follow the tropes.

We have our ass in a crack in Iraq, and Dead Eye Dick is offering Iran the other cheek. The longer we stay, the bigger chunk we leave behind. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has the Enemas-R-Us franchise. In all seriousness, folks, what we are facing away from is the Crack of Doom. It is too late to do our duty and get off the pot. The situation calls for a crowbar, not a plunger. Congress has handed the Plumber-in-Chief a new plunger; he's already got a fan.

Open a frame shop, invest in Sherwin Williams, pray to the murderous God of Love, if conscience permits; we, as individuals, as a people, as a nation, will not make this right because we can't even make it to wrong.

Well, it's a long, long time
From May to December
But the days grow short,
When you reach September.
And the autumn weather
Turns the leaves to gray
And I haven't got time
For the waiting game.

Music by Kurt Weill,
lyrics by Berthold Brecht,
translated by Maxwell Anderson,
and best sung by Lotte Lenya.

•  A very learned diary

  so many allusions and metaphors. And a lot of sense too. Of course, I'm a sucker for anyone who quotes me.

  by Brecht on Sat May 26, 2007 at 02:12:50 AM PDT

•  "We already got us right where they want us."

  So true.  Predictable, predicted, and put into practice.  George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden:  Twin Brats Bestride the World -- except one of them is smart and experienced.

  (The phrase is from Chris Floyd.)

  by Yellow Canary on Sat May 26, 2007 at 04:32:02 AM PDT

  •  9-11-24-7

    everyone wins.....

    by Hind2 on Sat May 26, 2007 at 08:53:42 PM PDT

•  Not even wrong

  Well put, Doc. And nice to see you over here - migrated from Salon? Best - R.

  by The Raven on Sat May 26, 2007 at 04:37:09 AM PDT

  •  I'm commuting.

    I recently renewed for another year at Salon Blogs, which I will probably regret soon, sooner, and soonest. There are a few hold-outs among the Salonistas, and I couldn't bring myself to leave while even a few compadres blogged on at Fort Salon. Totally nonrational decision. But, hokahey.

    ...we few, we unhappy few, we band of bloggers...

    I didn't know you had joined the kossacks; I'm glad to know where to find you, Raven, I'll keep an eye out for your posts.

    by The Reverend and Doctor Omed on Sat May 26, 2007 at 09:18:54 AM PDT

    •  Excellent Diary Doc...

      I tried to comment last night/this morning when the site glitched.  

      I am thrilled it was rescued!

      Take care,

      TAP

      by The American Prophet on Sat May 26, 2007 at 08:19:42 PM PDT

•  I think your imagery

  about confused fumbling in the dark is aptly applied to congressional Democrats, and the lack of logic certainly applies to the propaganda of the State war machine and the idiot dauphin. But I think the uncompromising activists of the antiwar movement are out in the street, in the light, and I think they have their heads on straight about this. The fascists may have the Vichy Dems where they want them, but there are still some in Congress (Feingold, Kucinich, Woolsey, Lee, Waters, and others like them) who are not lost and will not allow themselves to be manipulated.

  P.S.: Weill and Brecht wrote September Song? I never knew!

  by chesapeake on Sat May 26, 2007 at 05:03:00 AM PDT

  •  I don't want to put everyone in the same boat,

    but, I do. There is a sense in which even the most aware and enlightened actors in this horrific mis-en-scene can't see the moving hand's writ right in front of them. The science fiction writer R.A. Lafferty, understood, I think, and had the sense of it when he wrote:

    I'm going to talk about the peculiar science-fictionish circumstance and condition in which we are living.  It is, unfortunately, an overworked theme and situation that has been used hundreds of times and has never been well-handled even once.  It is the 'Day After The World Ended'  situation, subtitled 'Grubbing in the Rubble'.  It is the business of making out, a little bit, after a total catastrophe has hit.  There are possibilities for several good stories in this situation, and I puzzled for a long time as to why no good ones had ever been written.  I even myself tried and failed to write some good ones based on this set-up.  And only recently have I discovered why plausible fiction cannot be based on this situation.

    The reason here is that fact precludes fiction.  Being inside the situation, we are a little too close to it to see it clearly.  Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble.  SF has been carrying on about near-future or far-future destructions and its mind-set will not allow it to realize that the destruction of our world has already happened in the quite recent past, that today is 'The Day After The World Ended'.   Science Fiction is not alone in failing to understand what has happened.  There is an almost impenetrable amnesia that obstructs the examination of the actual catastrophe.

    I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years.  The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as 'Western Civilization' or 'Modern Civilization', happened suddenly.  That world, which was 'The World' for a few centuries, is gone.  Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general.  Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all 'ends of worlds'.  Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things.  It can't be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went...

    From R.A. Lafferty Non-Fiction: It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs

    by The Reverend and Doctor Omed on Sat May 26, 2007 at 09:42:06 AM PDT

    •  I see what you're saying,

      and you may be right. But don't underestimate the people who have taken a historical view of things all along.

      (On a side note: On the subject of the sudden ending of the world as we know it, you might want to take a look at www.kurzweilai.net, if you haven't already.)

      by chesapeake on Sun May 27, 2007 at 06:18:38 AM PDT

•  The God of Love is not murderous,

  so kindly don't refer to him as such. I sure wish I could figure out why God allowed the Son of Poppy and His holy minsters to gang-rape the world, but that's another discussion.

  Kind of oxymoronic to say "Lotte Lenya" and "sung" in the same sentence, but what the hey.

  by Champurrado on Sat May 26, 2007 at 08:16:53 PM PDT

  •  Lotte Lenya's voice, like Leonard Cohen's

    has been cured and finely aged by ten thousand gallons of whisky and a million cigarettes. Neither "sings" in the usual sense of the word, but both are canaries rasping out the last gasp of true song in the mineshaft of the soul just before the lamps goes out.

    Eine Sibylle

    Einst, vor Zeiten, nannte man sie alt.
    Doch sie blieb and kam dieselbe Strasse
    taglich. Und man anderte die Masse,
    und man zahlte sie wie einen Wald

    nach Jahrhunderten. Sie aber stand
    jeden Abend auf derselben Stelle,
    schwarz wie eine alte Citadelle
    hoch und hohl und ausgebrannt;

    von den Worten, die sich unbewacht
    wider ihren Willen in ihr mehrten,
    immerfort umschrieen und umflogen,
    wahrend die schon wieder heimgekehrten
    dunkel unter ihren Augenbogen
    sassen, fertig fur die Nacht.

    Rainer Marie Rilke

    by The Reverend and Doctor Omed on Sat May 26, 2007 at 10:58:30 PM PDT

    •  That Rilke...what a kidder!

      I can pick out some words from the poem, but will need to sit down mit einen Woerterbuch, um es auszufiguren. I'll give you "a kudo" for the mineshaft metaphor.

      by Champurrado on Sun May 27, 2007 at 11:18:42 AM PDT

  •  I thought the oxymoron was "God" and "Love."

    I don't believe in God, and I think belief in general and belief in God in particular is a dangerous thing.

    Believers, people who have mistaken the metaphors which they use to deal with "life, the universe, and everything" for the everything itself, in my view are much more likely to be incited to mass antics and to commit any crime against their fellow creatures, precisely because they think their belief system, their religion, their metaphor junkyard gives them the sanction.

    The sentimentality of belief is essentially a theft of the real to serve the unreal; stealing the authentic materials of real life, inner or outer, to fuel an outworn belief system's metaphorical engine. Galway Kinnell says, somewhere in The Book of Nightmares:  

    "It is the wound itself that lets us know and love."

    All our experience is inner experience. But it is precisely that projection of the meaningful contents of our interior life upon the outer world that brings forth monsters. Some make war, commit rapine and murder, because God is Love. Others make art because a transforming inner metaphor compels them to make love, in stone, with paint, on paper. I prefer living arts and dead gods.

    by The Reverend and Doctor Omed on Sat May 26, 2007 at 11:35:06 PM PDT

    •  And some, driven by love, go to places

      no one else would go and give of themselves, occasionally unto death, for the benefit of those whom no one else would help. You should have heard the guest speaker today, who's seen unconscionable things during her 4 years of ministry in India.

      by Champurrado on Sun May 27, 2007 at 11:21:05 AM PDT

•  you say....

  what I have been saying for a while... in a much more comprehendable fashion.  Even engaging Dubya and those like him is an excercise in futility.

  But you are right.  It is that bad and he is that out of it.  Although I am not 100% sure in the long run it would all matter since our use of resources is what it is but if we are going to ruin the earth and kill off our species I sure would like to do it in a way that everyone is having a damn good time...

  by Hind2 on Sat May 26, 2007 at 08:52:04 PM PDT

•  Thanks SusanG.!

  My oh my, what an incredible mind, and what an incredible writer. My curiosity is aroused by the lack of comments on this superb and suberbly written diary. Perhaps we are all busy this weekend memorializing past wars. Maybe the current fiasco will spell an end to this weekend. Thanks Doc.  

  by roots on Sun May 27, 2007 at 06:25:18 AM PDT

  •  Shucks.

    As those who know could tell you, I ain't nothin' but white trash with a mutant brain.

    You're quite welcome.

    by The Reverend and Doctor Omed on Sun May 27, 2007 at 11:32:42 AM PDT