Houghton

Pint pulling progressives & lager loving liberals,

I trust everyone's had a rejuvenating summer. Myself, I miss the KBC. On Thursday, September 4th at 8 pm (NOTE: 1 hour later), Drinking Liberally of Houghton comes off hiatus. We'd love to see you there and pick up the conversation where we left off.

As some of you know, Mike Levin, the western U.P. organizer for the Obama campaign is in Houghton. If you're interested in helping or getting more information about the local campaign, you can contact him at mlevin23@gmail.com or 231-392-4467.

I've not heard from the McCain campaign. Maybe he doesn't want our help.

Regardless, both major candidates have their running mates. Does Palin have enough experience? Will she steal the Hillary vote? Could she beat Biden in the evening gown competition? These questions and more await rigorous debate and a few laughs this Thursday night at 8 at the Keweenaw Brewing Company.

Jeremy

Added to YouTube October 12, 2007.

Wait, what? A U.S. scientist? Who did he work for?

Fort Detrick hosts memorial service for anthrax suspect, USA Today

You're saying the man who unleashed a biological attack on the United States, killing 5 people . . . admittedly not many by today's terrorism standards . . . 86,000-94,000 dead Iraqi civilians & 4000 or so dead American troops . . .
Iraq Body Count
. . . regardless, the man who unleashed a biological attack on the United States, was paid by the United States Army. What was his job in the Army, again?

"Dr. Ivins worked at the army biological weapons laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland." Scientist 'lone anthrax attacker', BBC

Oh, I get it. He designs new weapons of mass destruction for our miitary.

So, I can't wait until the trial to learn the details of the case. Oh, that's right. He committed suicide shortly after the FBI conducted a search warrant on his house.
Justice Department concludes Dr. Bruce Edwards Ivins--who killed himself last week--responsible for 2001 deadly anthrax attack. Press conference transcript, Chicago Sun-Times

That's a bummer . . . I still have some questions. Apparently, I'm not the only one.
"-- Was Ivins, as Marcy and Glenn Greenwald have wondered, a conscious part of the disinformation campaign to convince Congress and the public to go to war with Iraq?

-- Did Ivins -- if he really was the anthrax killer -- have any co-conspirators, as the evidence suggests?

-- Why was security at Fort Detrick, home of USAMRIID, probably the nation's most sensitive and secretive weapons laboratory, so lax as to allow this to happen?

-- And finally (and perhaps most significantly), was the mere fact of this kind of weaponized anthrax's existence at Fort Detrick another example of the Bush administration's flagrant violations of international law?"
Anthrax and the Bush 'War on Terror', Orcinus blog.

I'm still confused. Who were we looking for originally in these attacks?

"Iraq is the most expected source of mass anthrax bioterrorism."
Concerns vs. Chaos in the Anthrax Scare, Fox News, October 12, 2001.

"When the anthrax attacks occurred, Iraq was immediately fingered by some experts and many neoconservative hawks as a possible source; ABC News quoted three unnamed government sources as saying the powder in the letters matched the type produced in Iraq."
Anthrax deaths turned attention toward Iraq, Boston Globe, August 5, 2008

So, we have an anthrax attack on Democratic leaders and media figures, who would be the biggest roadblock to the Presidential prerogative to launch war on Iraq. We have conjecture linking the anthrax attack to Iraq. We now have an over 5-year-old, 543 billion dollar war in Iraq (and counting). We have evidence indicating the anthrax attack was an inside job, perpetrated by an Army scientist developing biological weapons. We have a dead Army scientist that developed biological weapons and attacked the United States . . . suicide, of course . . . overdose.

Connect the dots! La la la! Connect the dots! La la la!

It's funny . . . as I watched this video today, I couldn't help but think I'd seen a Batman comparison somewhere else recently. Strange the way the hippest, coolest, blockbuster pop culture icons squirm their way into every corner of the collective consciousness, even our political discourse.

Turns out I'd seen it right here at Drinking Liberally in a blog by founder Justin Krebs titled The Barack-Man vs. The Joker.

At Screening Liberally, Seth Pearce writes in Batman and Bush's Failure to Combat Terrorism about the film's "accurate depiction of the political and social climate of the world as it is today."

Even the Wall Street Journal ran a piece titled What Bush and Batman Have in Common, hailing the film as "a conservative movie about the war on terror . . . making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans," says Andrew Klavan. Klavan asks, "Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like '300,' 'Lord of the Rings,' 'Narnia,' 'Spiderman 3' and now 'The Dark Knight'?"

Klavan goes on to reject the moral relativism of the left in favor of conservative moral absolutism.

"The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love," Klavan continues.

He concludes that, "That's real moral complexity. And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror."

I've heard these arguments before . . . the ends justify the means. But to what end does the Bush Administration lead us all? Ultimately, this brand of values reduces to moral consequentialism as opposed to absolutism or relativism, in that the consequences of one's actions determine the morality of those actions. President Bush is fond of statements reflecting his belief that history will be the judge of his decision to preemptively invade and make war on an unthreatening sovereign power. Furthermore, the extent to which American civil liberties have been eroded, prisoners have been tortured, the Justice Department has been rearranged, indicate that the Bush Administration has fully adopted the morality that truly American values must be shelved in order to protect American values, or so we are led to believe.

My suspicion is that American values are shelved by the Bush Administration for the accomplishment of Neoconservative geopolitical goals: expanding the military-industrial-petroleum complex driven economy, amassing wealth for its elites, while projecting imperial power abroad.

In 2004, Hugh Urban at Ohio State University wrote an extensively researched and referenced article for the journal Esoterica entitled Religion and Secrecy in the Bush Administration. In it, he views the Bush Administration in the contexts of the philosophies of Leo Strauss, Niccolo Machiavelli and Jean Baudrillard. To Urban, Bush sits at the convergence of three basic forces: the Neoconservative movement, led in part by Paul Wolfowitz, a student of Strauss; the Machiavellian machinations of Rove and Cheney to clean up G.W.'s image and coerce the religious right; and the sensationalist mainstream media that promoted the image of the devote man of faith, leaving out the more unsavory bits.

Baudrillard's concepts of hyperreality and simulated culture struck a new chord with me as I read Klavan's Batman/Bush comparison article. We've entered a strange time in American culture when the lines of entertainment, journalism, politics, marketing are not just blurred, but have ceased to exist. We have a culture that will largely permit the ludicrous assertion that the latest success of the most recent caped superhero movie somehow lends credence to the morality behind the policies of the most secretive and deceptive American Presidency in memory. The model is now the reality.

Pious President? Man of Faith? Deep Convictions? Windshield Cowboy? Superhero? Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? Something tells me we never knew George W. Bush . . . if there was a character to know. Something tells me the image of our still President, both positive or negative, fails to reveal some deeper truth of the man, some noble values or evil intent, but a rather empty head and spirit . . . a fitting tool for more ambitious and industrious hands.

"More human than human, that's our motto."