On bin Laden, Birthers, and Conspiracy Theorists

As of this writing, it's been 4 days since Osama bin Laden was given his receipt for 9/11, for the USS Cole, for the first World Trade Center bombing, for the bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and for several other actions. I can only imagine he is absolutely perplexed and wondering where the virgins are.

(And that's not anti-Islam--no matter whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever religion, I think there is complete agreement that he is not in paradise at this time)

Does this solve anything in reality? No. At this point, his death is purely cathartic for the families of those he added to his list of victims. But as tacky as it might be to cheer the death of any person, this would be the person that you get a pass on. This doesn't help us strategically, and it won't end any of the wars. But damn--it feels sooooo good.

Or, at least it did. I wanted to gloat. I wanted to brag about the exploits of SEAL Team Six (or, as Stephen Colbert called them, "these Abbottabad-asses"). I wanted to finally celebrate that, 9 1/2 years after he popped up on the majority of our radars, and 10 1/2 years after he popped up on my radar, he's finally roasting in Hell.

But now that the days are wearing on, I'm noticing that the usual crowd is out and about. We saw them when JFK was assassinated. We saw them when man landed on the moon. We saw them after Vince Foster's tragic suicide. We saw them after the collapse of the towers. And we've seen them since about 2008, when it became clear that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee.

Let's be clear: conspiracy theorists of all stripes are systemically delusional. They see this:

and interpret it as this:

They see this:

and interpret it as this:

And they see this:

And interpret it as this:

You can't deal with this level of crazy. You simply can't. Obama took them on finally a couple of weeks ago. Rather than ignore them like everyone should, he finally released his long-form birth certificate. The response? "Oh, his father's race is listed as 'African', when it would've been 'Negro' back then. It's obviously a forgery." Popular Mechanics took on the 9/11 Truthers to no avail, because men with advanced degrees in physics are no match for kids living in their mom's basement. And had the White House released the photos (and subsequently endangered our troops and Americans abroad to higher risks), the response would be that the photos were Photoshopped. "Oh, see? Osama's beard is shorter in previous photographs than this one! It's obviously a forgery!" (Actually, there would be far more grammatical, spelling, and capitalization errors--maybe even a couple of LOL's, and definitely a "teh" somewhere--but you get my point)

Where can you find these people? Back in the day, you simply couldn't. As I told a friend, we properly and correctly stuck them in far-away corners of our society. We let them go on with their tales of endemic corruption that would allow perfectly good people to take actions that would harm their own country, and we occasionally looked at them, pointed, laughed, snickered, and then went back to being competent adults.

But we now have the Internet. That great tool that has brought us such worthwhile hits as the Pamela Anderson sex tapes and LOLcats has also been an enabler for a large number of these not-so-great tools in our society. It allows collaboration between the various corners we've put them into, and thus made one big corner which serves as an echo chamber that is hard not to notice. Combine that with the 24/7 news channels and other news media, which have to report on something and usually prefer that something to have a weird hook--and what you see is a slow infection of otherwise sane people to start believing these theories.

And it is affecting politics more and more over the past 10 years. You see Republicans trying to distance themselves from the crazy, while not upsetting them so much that they will lose their vote. You saw Democrats pander to them as well during the Bush Administration, trying to force symbolic votes that sent the message of "Yes, Bush stole the election and we're fighting it", even though the vast majority of serious Democrats saw them as nothing more than moonbats. In short, the end result of these people is that they are becoming a poison, a cancer upon our body politic.

What can be done about it? Not very much in terms of swaying the true believer. The problem with a conspiracy theory is that it goes against the grain of how something is proven. In court, the party that makes a claim then has to prove it up. In science, the person who has a hypothesis has to do the research to prove their hypothesis and get it recognized as a working theory. But conspiracy theories work in reverse--the claim is made, and then the burden of proof is thrown on the accused to prove down. And you can't prove it down, because every piece of proof can be explained away, or even turned around and shown to be more "proof" that such a conspiracy exists. Rationality doesn't exist--merely the overarching conspiracy against the aggrieved.

But, there is one possibility, and it's the same thing we used to do to shut down conspiracy theorists--ignore them. The media has to make a concerted effort to only talk about issues of importance. Even if you're a biased cable news channel that sees a possible conspiracy in someone's origins (hello, Fox News) or in someone's military service (hello, MSNBC)...ignore it. Demand proof. Demand that this Church of Latter-Day Aint's either prove their case, or leave us alone and shut up. We, as citizens, have to stop rubbernecking to view the crazy guy shouting on the side of the road in between breaks where he drinks his own urine.

To Obama-ize my point, let me be clear: in an pharmaceutical era where the worst affliction one can experience is restless leg syndrome, we need to treat these self-perceived pariahs as the lepers of our time. Ignore them. Marginalize their crazy. Demand proof or silence.

Maybe then, we can finally start having an adult conversation and get back to trying to solve the problems that America faces.

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends...

After an extended absence, it's about time for me to get back into blogging. I've done it before, and done it elsewhere. Why here? Why now?

Well, there's a few small reasons. Occasional posts on the law and changes to the law. Maybe analysis of a few big cases that might not be able to fit in on another site. And possibly a few things about my own life.

But every site needs its own niche, and here's mine.

Mainly, I see conservatism at a crossroads. While we have several "conservatives" in Congress willing to deify Ronald Reagan (including but not limited to renaming the Capitol after Reagan), few understand Reagan's philosophy or even his record. Reagan was small-government in every sense of the phrase. His insistence on getting government out of people's lives didn't simply stop at the pocketbook. He understood that a government that can control your most intimate actions is a government that can control every one of your actions. Reagan--and Barry Goldwater as well--had a disdain for an overarching government in all forms, not just financial.

Too many of our current class have no clue what it means to be a "Reagan Republican" or a "Goldwater conservative". What do I mean? Let's see...

• Tax cuts are no longer a solution for the vexing problems of government overspending and consumer underspending--they are now pure dogma, and with the lame-duck fights of December 2010, we realize that the fight exists mainly to provide the cuts for the top bracket of society. While Reagan and Goldwater certainly sought to cut taxes whenever possible and feasible, they also realized that our government needed money to operate, and they weren't going to be bound to a dogma no matter what. And they did raise taxes when needed--look it up.
• Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians to a person will tell you that our nation needs to get our spending problems under control. But what do we propose? Military spending? Despite the epic waste that occurs in the military budget, that is off-limits. Social Security? Well, here we get more people who are willing to tackle the issue--at least in talking points. But no serious solutions have been proposed to counteract the fact that Social Security will go bankrupt by the time most twenty-somethings are ready to retire, because that might cost some votes now. Medicare and Medicaid? Same as Social Security, which is to say same as it ever was. So, in our era of overspending, since we obviously can't cut our spending in paying our debts back with interest, we have relegated 81 percent of our budget to "untouchable" status. Weakness, in other words--something else Goldwater or Reagan was never known for.
• Finally, many of our current crop of "conservatives" want nobody policing people's wallets, but want at least 3 officers in every person's bedrooms. George W. Bush ran his re-election campaign on making sure homosexuals couldn't get married. For what reason? The sanctity of marriage? As the late comedian Greg Giraldo put it to married couples in his audience: "What's so sacred about marriage? Does it really feel like a gift from God?" Conservatives have rightly treated the Second Amendment as sacrosanct and absolute, but are willing to ignore the First Amendment if they think it violates their own religious principles.

There are many other reasons, mind you, but that's just a starting list. So that's reason number one.

But I also seek an outlet for my writings, free from oversight and banning. I tire of being excluded elsewhere because I don't buy into the notion that religious bigotry should be the basis of our law. I tire of being excluded elsewhere because I tend to be rational rather than rigid. So there's that.

And that's what I'm doing here. I don't expect this to grow into much. If it does, then so be it. But I'd be perfectly fine with presenting a somewhat unique point of view that causes a few people to think and reassess where they're at. And, if not, at least I'm trying.

So there you go. If you like what you read, stick around. Post comments. Engage in the debate. And if you don't like what you read...tough. Get your own blogspot.