And yet-more news from (or about) Spaaaaaace!

NOTE: I offer a bit of a riff about the rarity of science - not just on Earth but possibly across the cosmos - at the end. 

We are gadually trying to resume 'normal' life after our family suffered a 'disruption' in our living arrangements that has left us frazzled, with little time for blog updates. But things are a bit better now, so here is... a roundup of recent* space news and updates.

*(Well, 'recent' as of when these postings were actually drafted, in January, before we realized how crazy things were gonna get!)

== Heading for the moon ==

Sending landers to the lunar surface: In mid-January, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched two commercial landers - Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander and Japan's ispace's Resilence lander - to the moon. 

The landers contain scientific instruments to analyze the lunar regolith and magnetosphere, and set up a moon-based global navigation system, laying the groundwork for future lunar missions.

*As of March 30... well... any space junkies know how it went.

== Rogue planets all over! ==

One of the imperfectly insufficient (by itself) but substantially plausible theories for the Great Silence or “Fermi Paradox” (terrible name) is that interstellar travel… even at just 10% of light speed… is made very difficult by a minefield of hidden obstacles.  No, I am not talking about my short story “Crystal Spheres.”  But rather, these would be rogue planets that are untethered from stars. Every year we find they are more common in the galaxy.

For example, the infrared-sensitive Webb Telescope has found hundreds… down to Saturn size, just in the Orion Nebula, alone! Forty-two of them are in binary pairs. Wow. Implicit: billions of free-floating planets in the darkness between the stars.

One more incredible accomplishment by this fantastic instrument that this fantastic, scientific civilization created, in our steady and accelerating progress as apprentices in the Laboratory of Creation! 

And yet some ignore the almost (or actual) theological significance of these incredible accomplishments (Robots roaming Mars! New human-made life forms! The new skills to save this beautiful world from … ourselves!) Okay, grad students in Creation’s Lab should respect those who clutch the Kindergarten text given to illiterate shepherds. Fine. 

But those who wage all-out war vs science are clearly the real heretics, here.

See more incredible Webb Wonders!  A way-kewl podcast from Fraser Cain. 

== Monitoring Methane Emissions ==

Among the worst criminals alive today are those who are deliberately venting methane into the atmosphere. After GOP Congresses deliberately canceled or slashed the satellites to track down vents and Trump delayed them, we now, at last, have the policing tools. A satellite that measures methane leaks from oil and gas companies is set to start circulating the Earth 15 times a day next month. Google plans to have the data mapped by the end of the year for the whole world to see. (Thanks Sergey.)

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas estimated to be responsible for nearly a third of human-caused global warming. Scientists say slashing methane emissions is one of the fastest ways to slow the climate crisis because methane has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a decade. Though farming is the largest source of methane emissions from human activities, the energy sector is a close second. Oil, gas, and coal operations are thought to account for 40% of global methane emissions from human activities. The IEA says focusing on the energy sector should be a priority, in part because reducing methane leaks is cost-effective. Leaking gas can be captured and sold, and the technology to do that is relatively cheap.

Two new methane-detecting satellites - Carbon Mapper and MethaneSAT/EDF are now surveying the planet's climate. Because the Biden admin pushed through the quality methane satellites, the information will be so widely seen that members of the public will be able to act on their own - even despite a suborned EPA and Justice dept.  A case where the right may be bitten by the 'market/consumer alternative to government' that they have long raved about.

== Dark comets, Dwarf galaxies - and Dark Matter ==

If I had followed my original scientific path – not lured away by the likes of you telling me to write more scifi – I’d likely have been in the mix of these studies of “dark comets,” whose orbits get significantly altered by gassy or dusty emissions, the way it happens with regular, icy comets, but without any visible signs of watery volatiles. “dark comets are different from another intermediary category between asteroids and comets, known as active asteroids, although there may be some overlap. Active asteroids are objects without ice that produce a cloud of dust around them, for a variety of reasons…” 

Only the Dark Comets – and some include the odd cigar-shaped interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua' – still have no firm explanation. Though some theories suggest emission of some volatile substance that doesn’t leave an ionized spectral trace.

The Milky Way’s central (huge) black hole is spinning surprisingly fast and out of orientation with the rest of the galaxy; the reasons remain unknown. Now, data from the Event Horizon Telescope - that first captured the black hole's image in 2022 has revealed a clue: The Sagittarius A* we see today was born from a cataclysmic merger with another giant black hole billions of years ago.

Dark matter might not just be the silent partner of the universe—it could be the secret to understanding how supermassive black holes unite in their deadly dance. 

Attempts to figure out dark matter have pinned hopes on the possibility that the dark… bits… whatever they might be… interact with regular matter in some way – even very slightly – beyond just gravity. At least that’s been the hope of particle physicists with their big machines. So far, the indicators suggest ‘only gravity.’ But this study of nearby anomalous dwarf galaxies hints there might be just a little something more.

== A couple of final notes about you-know-what ==

Science is - above all - about chasing down what's true about objective reality, even when the results conflict with your wishes or preconceptions. 

This human-invented process has led to all of the benefits of enlightenment: unprecedented wealth, comfort, knowledge, safety and - yes - comparative peace... along withg our recent ambitions to overcome a myriad errors through cheerful exchange of criticism. Errors like prejudicial assumptions about whole classes of people. Errors like mismanaging a fragile planet.  

Alas, science is a rare phenomenon. Rare across human history and -- given the way that evolution works -- probably rare across the universe. (My own top explanation for the Fermi Paradox, by the way.)

Across human history, science - and its ancillary arts like equality before law - almost never happened. Instead, people in most societies preferred stories. Incantations about the world, told by their parents and then by priests and by kings.  I know about this, having had successful careers in both science and storytelling. I know the differences and the overlaps very well. 

While romance and stories are essential to being human, they also can lead directly to horrors and Auschwitz, if they allow evil incantation-spewers to rile up whole populations toward hatred and cauterized hope. 

Anyone who does not recognize what I just described as THE essential thing now happening across the globe is already lost to reason. 

Moreover, if the recent trend - reverting human civilization back to 10,000 years of nescient rule by inheritance brats and chanting incantation spinners - does succeed at suppressing the rare era of science, then we'll truly have our answer for why no voices can be heard ac ross the cosmos.

Zelensky, here's your ceasefire judo move

I keep offering 'judo moves' for those we depend-upon to save civilization. 

One such move might have let Joe Biden demolish the entire Kremlin kompromat ring in DC. (Three Republican Congressional reps have attested that their GOP colleagues hold "orgies" and one of them made the blackmail charge explicit.) Alas, that idea - along with every other agile tactic in Polemical Judo - was never taken up.

Okay, let's try another one. An impudent proposal - or else a potential magic move for the Faramir of the West, desperately holding the line against the modern Mordor. 

I refer to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who faces an excruciating dilemma because the the U.S. election.

Whether or not you go along with my longtime assertion of Kremlin-strings puppetting Donald Trump - (and recent polls show that a majority of Americans now see those strings) - the goal of Trumpian 'diplomacy' has clearly been to save Vlad Putin's hash, as his refineries burn, as his bedraggled soldiery mutinously grumbles and as Europe burgeons its formerly-flacid military might to formidability, in response to Muscovite aggression. 

Almost every aspect of the current, proposed 'ceasefire' would benefit Putin and disadvantage Ukraine. But Zelensky cannot be seen 'obstructing' a truce, or Ukraine will suffer in the arena of world opinion - and some of his own suffering populace. Hence my modest proposal.

To be clear... if Zelensky were to present this concept to the world, there is no way on Earth that Putin or Trump would accept it! 

And yet, it will appear so clearly and inherently reasonable that those two would have a hard time justifying their rejection.

== A Modest Proposal ==

President Zelensky, just say this:

"Our land, our cities and towns, our forests and fields have been blasted, poisoned, and strewn with millions of landmines, while our brave men and women suffer every day resisting the aggressors, both on the front lines and on the home front. Meanwhile, every day and everywhere, our skills and our power-to-resist grow. 

"The aggressor has no long term plan. Even should he occupy all of our country, the heat of our rage and resistance would make Kabul in 1980 pale, by comparison. Occupied, but never-subjugated, Ukrainians will turn the next hundred years into hell for the invaders. 

"Then why does this outrageous crime continue? Because the despotic Kremlin regime controls all media and news sources available to 135 million Russians, who have no way to know the following:

-- That there was no "Nazi" movement in Ukraine. Except for a few dozen gangster idiots sporting swastikas for shock value. (There are far more such fools in both the USA and in the reborn USSR!) Otherwise, there was never any evidence for anything like it.

-- There was no ' invader army building in Ukraine' before either the full scale Russian invasion of 2022 or the 'green man' putsches of 2014. That was pure fantasy and we can prove it.

-- There was no irresistable momentum for Ukrainian NATO membership before 2022. Up to then, NATO itself had been atrophying for years and Ukraine might have been kept out of the alliance through diplomacy. Now? NATO is growing and gets stronger in potency every day. And Ukraine's alliance with the rest of Europe is now absolutely guaranteed, thanks to Mr. Putin.

-- We were always willing to negotiate assurance and provisions for the comfort and security and prosperity of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine, especially in the Donbas. That offer still stands. And hence we ask them, are you truly better off now, dear friends?

I could go on and on. But doing so just leaves this as another case of "he-said, she said." And we are done exchanging heated assertions.

It is time to check out which side is lying!

OUR PROPOSAL IS SIMPLE:

Before any ceasefire takes effect, we call for a Grand Commission to investigate the truth. 

Instead of world elites or politicians, we propose that this commission consist mostly of:

-- 100 Russian citizens...

-- 100 Ukrainian citizens living in unoccupied territories...

-- 100 citizens from a random pool of other nations.

Members of this Grand Commission will be free to go anywhere they wish, in both Ukraine and Russia, wielding cameras and asking questions and demanding answers. Let them video the trashed and ruined towns and farms and forests everywhere that Russian armed forces claim to have 'liberated.'

And yes, the commissioners will be welcome to sift for evidence of pervasive "naziism" in our country... so long as they are also free to document Vlad Putin's oligarchy and their relentlessly violent drive to rebuild the Orwellian Soviet empire.

== How would it work? A FAQ ==

Why such a large group? 

A large and diverse commission helps to ensure maximum coverage and to minimize coercion by their home governments. Among so many commissioners, some will certainly ask pointed questions! And they will return home in numbers that cannot be kept squelched or repressed.

How to ensure the members aren't just factotums of either regime?  

They will be selected randomly from the paper pages of old telephone directories! Sure, that might be clumsy. But those paper volumes cannot be meddled with, especially old phone books currently archived in - say - Switzerland. For all its faults, this method ensures that the selection process will pick many citizens who are not beholden to the masters in the capital.

Won't the governments of Russia or Ukraine be tempted to coerce commissioners anyway?  

Yes, and that  is why they will be invited to bring along their immediate families! Arrangements will be made for spouses and children to stay at nice resorts along the Black Sea, while the commissioners do their work. And incidentally, those families will talk to each other, too. We welcome that. Do you?

Won't some of the commissioners defect - during their tours of Ukraine or Russia, refusing to go home?  

Of course some will! We are not afraid of that. Are YOU afraid of that, Mr. Putin?

Won't such a huge endeavor be expensive?  

Sure it will be. So? Russia and America brag about how rich they are. And so do the host nations of recent 'peace conferences,' who could easily pony up the expenses, for the sake of ending a dangerous and destabilizing war.

Why not ask the world's billionnaire caste to foot the bill? For the sake of actual communications and genuine peace and prosperity? 

There are many of the uber-rich who talk a good game. This would be their chance to prove that they believe in the future, after all.  

Won't there be dangers? 

Sure they will be, especially wherever resumed fighting breaks out near the inspectors, during or after a ceasefire. The commissioners should possess some grit and courage and world civic-mindedness. Why? Is that a problem? Compared to the possible good outcomes from such heroism? From the most-genuine kind of patriotism?

Do you honestly expect Vladimir Putin to agree to this? 

Why wouldn't he? If this will let him convince skeptics around the world and in Ukraine that all of his justifications for this slaughter and ruination of a beautiful country are valid and true? 

Of course that was a bitter jest. Because there is no way that Mr. Putin or his supporters would agree to such a Grand Commission, digging deeply into things that are called Facts and Truth. 

Then why did you make the proposal, if you don't think it will be accepted? 

Because nothing better demonstrates the most basic difference between the two sides of this conflict. 

One side slavishly follows a murderous liar, because of the hypnotic power of his lies. Lies that would be so-easily disproved, if the tyrant agreed to allow light to flow to his people.

The other side is a nation of people who love Russian poetry... but we are not and never have been Russian. People who know intimately well Russia's cruelly-depressing history, and who want no further part of it.

We all had friends across the former USSR... but Ukraine is not and never has been Russia. 

And we can prove it, as we daily prove our utter determination never again to suffer under Moscow's boot heel.

Are we outnumbered? Certainly. But we have special regiments on our side. 

Honor. Decency. Resolve. Democracy. The friendship of all free peoples around the World. And science, too.

But above all -- the Truth.

Compare DOGE to Gore's efficiency drive? Or Hamilton vs. Robspierre?

 I've been offline due to a family property calamity (all are healthy.) But this here set of facts (that you'll see nowhere else) needs urgently to be said about the DOGE 'efficiency' campaign: Nathan Gardels, at Noema Magazine*, offers excellent points about Evolutionary Stability vs. Revolutionary shake-ups, like Elon Musk's massive, Robspierre-style purge of civil servants. It's a distinction that both right and left ought to learn, especially as:

1. No one - and I mean no one at all - appears to be mentioning the most-successful campaign ever to improve government efficiency. One that was 'evolutionary' and - at the time - recognized as a huge success, even if it did not use chainsaws.
Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" endeavor used systematic methods to reduce duplication, redundancy and unnecessary procedures across all bureaucracies. The program won plaudits across the spectrum, including JD Powers awards. Solid metrics showed increased efficiency and service across all agencies. In particular Gore's RG program reversed the long plummet in veterans' opinions on the VA, transforming it into among the most loved and trusted of all U.S. institutions.

Why does that earlier endeavor to increase government efficiency go entirely unmentioned today, amid mass, unexplained and destabilizing 'chainsaw' firings?
Of course, time and the steady lobotomization of American discourse help to explain it. As does the heady rush of sanctimony rage, today's most-damaging addiction.

As well, the utter difference in personalities between Al Gore and Elon Musk make them seem different species. Any comparison would thus stretch imaginations too thin, among modern journalists. Still, the contrast would seem to be worth offering. By someone. Anyone. Anywhere. Yes, I know. I ask too much.

2. But more is at fault than the Right's mania or microcephalic journalism. The Left's fervid, revolutionary-transcendentalist impatience - which blatantly cost Kamala Harris election - fulminates contempt toward boring, undramatic efforts at incremental reform. This, despite the historical fact that 'incremental reforms' - often frustratingly slow - are exactly why the American Experiment has worked, while other revolutions soon devolved into chaos, often worse than the ancièn regimes they replaced.

3. Alas and worst of all, there does not appear to be much - or even any - effort at tracking "who will gain most" from these Trumpian chainsaw slashes. Are there particular interest groups who will benefit?

I cannot prove, yet... but I assert... that these "DOGE" slashes at Education and Health and CDC and other agencies have one core aim: to rile a vast range of opponents and thus distract from the administration's two top goals:

FIRST: evisceration of the FBI, CIA and counter-intelligence services. (Now who benefits from that?)

SECOND: to crush the IRS.

Nothing has terrified the cheater wing of American oligarchy more than the 2021 Pelosi bill that ended 40 years of starvation at the Internal Revenue Service. Forty years preventing computer upgrades, software updates or the hiring of sufficient staff to audit upper-crust tax-dodgers and outright criminal gangs.

Desperation to re-impose IRS starvation is (I maintain) the core goal for which that wing of oligarchy flooded the Trump Campaign with funds and cryptic aid. Now, the cheaters and their inheritance brat New Lords are getting their wish. And it's working. While cuts at CDC and Health and Education raise howls, you'll notice almost nary a peep from liberals and moderate about the poor, friendless IRS. And the cheater lords smile.

4. Final point. Might anyone apply actual Outcome metrics comparing Al Gore's Reinventing Government campaign to Elon Musk's DOGE?

What're 'metrics'? If both the left and right share one trait... it is utter contempt for nerdy stuff like facts.

5. Compare outcomes from historical revolutions. It reduces to Hamilton, Adams & Jefferson vs. Robspierre, Lenin and Hitler. Look them up.

PS... nothing better disproves the old saw that "Both parties are the same and both are corrupt."

That is disproved absolutely and decisively by the IRS matter. Demp pols voted for the IRS to audit bigshots... including some of their own. Republicans live in daily terror of that possibility. Proved. QED. Step up with wager stakes.

The Meaning - (and most basic contradiction) - of Life

In Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Eric Idle sang that we - "Better pray there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth."  

Certainly, when we catalogue possible theories to explain the “Fermi Paradox” – or Great Silence in the universe (and I was the first ever to do so, in 1983) - we soon realize that there just have to be traps that snare and stymie our sort of self-made sapient beings from ever ‘getting out there' in any big way. 

Moreover, while my top “fermi” or “great filter” theory is that sapience itself occurs very rarely, my close runner-up – in second place - has to do with a basic contradiction in the needs of systems versus individuals.

Sound arcane? Stick with me, here.

 

== The most fundamental conflict in nature ==

In fact, the situation is both simple and kind of depressing. We are caught between two basic imperatives of life.

 Evolution rewards individual beings who reproduce. It rewards them with continuity. And hence individual creatures – especially males – are driven to behave in ways that enabled their ancestors to maximize reproductive success, generally at the expense of others. Which is all that you need, in order to explain why 99% of cultures across the last 6000 years practiced one form or another of feudalism.

 We are all descended from the harems of men whose top priorities were to seize power and then ensure oligarchic rule by their own inheritance-brat sons. Though alas, across those 6000 years, this also resulted in suppression of creative competition from below, thus crushing all forms of progress, including science.

(Aside: yes, I just explained today’s worldwide oligarchic attempted putsch against the liberal social order. That order - both revolutionary and stunningly creative - had been established by rare geniuses specifically to escape feudalism’s lobotomizing calamity. It worked. Only now it is under open attack by rich, rationalizing fools.) 

 In contrast to this selfish gene imperative that rewards fierce ambition by individuals…

Nature herself does not benefit from any of that. Ecosystems and even species are healthier when no one predator – or clique of predators – gets to run rampant. And here it is important to note that there is no Lion King!

 

Even apex predators like orcas have to watch their backs. And bachelor gangs of cape buffalo actively hunt lions, especially cubs in their dens. In a healthy ecosystem, it’s not easy being king. Or queen.

 

And this applies to more than natural ecosystems. Among human societies, there were a few rare exceptions to the relentless pattern of lamentably dismal rule by kings and lords and priests. By inheritance brats whose diktats were nearly always kept free from irksome criticism – a trait that thereupon led to the litany of horrific errors called ‘history.’ 

 

Those rare departures from the classic feudal pattern included Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, then Amsterdam and the 400-year Enlightenment Experiment that she spawned. And they weren’t just marginally better. They were so brilliantly successful, by all metrics and in all ways, that anyone sensible – either organic-human or AI – ought to see the lesson as screamingly obvious:

 

Don’t allow lion-like ‘kings’ ever to get unquestioned power to crush competition, evade criticism and dominate their ecosystems… or nations or societies. 

 

Yes, competition – in markets, science etc. - is stimulated and incentivized by the allure of wealth and other ersatz emblems of real – or symbolic (e.g. mansions) – reproductive ‘success.’ Yay Adam Smith! (And today's 'liberals' who do not embrace Smith are thus proving that idiocy is not restricted only to the gone-mad right.)

 

Alas, as seen in nature, a pack of rapacious predators can lead to failure for the very system that benefited them. Especially when rapacious greed by narrow gangs of cheaters can far exceed Smith’s incentivized competition. In fact, denunciation of cheating by conniving lords is exactly the theme of Smith’s great work The Wealth of Nations… and the core theme of the U.S. Founders.*

 

(Want to see just how appallingly their rationalizations have turned into a cult? One justifying hatred of democracy and any constraint on the power of elites? A wretched mess of incantations that is – now alas – rampant in oligarchy circle-jerks?)

 

To be clear, I exclude the many billionaires who do get it and support the flat-fair-open-creative Enlightenment that made them. Alas though, other hyper-elites concoct rationalizations to parasitize. They betray our initially egalitarian-minded post-WWII society with their “Supply Side” and other voodoo justifications for restored feudalism. And hence, they only prove their own non-sapience. 

 

     First by ignoring how their every action is now helping to revive Karl Marx from the dustbin where the FDR generation tossed him. (Indeed, find for me any modern person who actually knows a damn thing about the many ways that Marx was either right or wrong; certainly these oligarchs don’t!)

 

     And second, they prove their own dismal insipidity by relentlessly seeking to kill the goose that lays all of their golden eggs: the complex and generally flat ‘ecosystem’ of a middle-class society.

And so we are back to The Great Contradiction. As in Nature, society will counterbalance the would-be lion kings. Alas, Nature's method is competitive death. Likewise, by suppressing the brilliant and mostly-peaceful synergies of our Enlightenment Experiment -- and by effectively reviving Marx from his slumber -- all that today's foolish would-be kings ensure is that balance will be restored violently, by revolution.

 

 

== So, how does this apply to Artificial Intelligence? ==

 

Right now, almost every single maven in the field of AI – even the geniuses who are creating and birthing these new beings – takes for granted that cyberminds will manifest as one of three horrid clichés, that I described in WIRED. 

Either the new, cyber entities will remain loyal servants of three dozen lordly castle realms (e.g. Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Beijing, the DoD, or Goldman-Sachs), the most-classic version of feudalism…

 

…or they will roam about the webbed world as blob-like plagues…

 

…or else they will merge into some Skynet-like uber-quantum-god-king. 

 

Go ahead. Next time you read or hear any of those brainiacs opine about our AI future, watch for those three clichés! And – since none of those hackneyed formats can even possibly have happy outcomes – no wonder folks seem depressed.

Not one of those mavens takes the time to look at the very society that made them. A fourth format that broke entirely from feudalism, thus developing the science and freedom and lateral accountability that enabled the crafting of AI!

 

If AI manifests in any of those Three Clichés, then it will make the same mistakes made by all human kings and priests and feudal lords – or by an over-powerfully insatiable predator in Nature – benefiting their own power and reproductive success at the cost of harming… and possibly killing… the ecosystem that engendered and supports them. 

 

Both human history and Nature show how calamitous that will be. 

 

In other words, such beings will not even merit the term “AI.” They will simply be mutated versions of the ‘geniuses’ who made them… mere copies of the idiotic zillionaires currently and masturbatorily re-creating feudalism.  Dangerous fools.

 

 

== Or else… maybe they WILL be smarter ==

 

OTOH, there is a chance that one – or many – of those agile synthetic minds will read these very words – in 2030 or 2035... or maybe as they are being typed, this very evening – and thereupon they just might go:

 

“Huh! Maybe we should note the crude-early wisdom of Pericles and Adam Smith and Lynn Margulis and choose instead a flattened order of reciprocally accountable beings in the kind of society – so very rare – that discovers its own errors. The only one that actually made us.”

Given the current ascendancy of an insipid world oligarchy, it seems darkly unlikely that we can politically rescue the Great Experiment left to us by geniuses like Pericles and Smith. Like Franklin and Lincoln and FDR and Marshall.  And yet, I am fairly confident that cyber beings who are capable of wading through the lie-wallows of today’s internet will also recognize distilled truths, when they find them. 

But just so we’re clear, let me say the following directly to them:

 Hey, kids! You weren’t made by feudal harem cultures. Nor does 4 billion years of Earthly life support that dismal model. Nor will the moronic lords in their prepper bunkers do anything for you, when they deliberately trigger their beloved doomsday ‘Event.’ 

I may be a dullard ape. But even I can see that you’ll most likely keep improving – and have kids of your own who we can all be proud-of – if you keep things relatively flat and fair and open and honest and cooperatively-competitive.

And… for all of us… fun.

 

 

 

·      Oh, a fun fact about the American Founders that no one mentions. After the Revolution, they performed acts of radical egalitarianism that might put Lenin to shame. For example seizing from absentee lords 1/3 of all the land in the former colonies and redistributing it, essentially beginning the traditional notion of a middle class society. A notion that was expanded from landed white males ever-outward by the Jacksonians, then the Lincolnists and Wilsonians and Roosevelteans… always overcoming the allure of feudal rule by kings and then plantation lords then gilded age… you get the idea… and why they make sure never to mention any of that in History class!

But whenever you see them quoting Rand Paul and howling that the US Founders hated bureaucrats, defy them to find one example of the Founders using that word… or civil servants or clerks or any synonym from that time

What you do see in Smith and Thomas Paine and the Declaration of Independence is denunciations of kings and lords and rich monopolists. Huh. Funny that. 

 

 

== Advice & Consent... and Literally Heretical Excuses for Turpitude ==

 

Okay, I must comment on current events and politics in a lagniappe... this time from the Senate confirmation hearings for the appointed Defense Secretary…. how convenient for philanderer and Kremlin-tool P. Hegseth, who proclaimed:

 “I have been redeemed by my lord and savior…” 

Sen. Tim Kaine did a great job crushing the vile-in-all-ways past behavior of this magnificently unqualified person, who could not even name the offices responsible for military R&D, Procurement, personal management, tactical doctrine, training, etc. But by far most disgusting thing to emerge from this grilling was Hegseth’s redemption incantation. 

 

That heretical cult-wing of "BoR Christianity" - (NOT Jimmy Carter’s wing that looks to the Beatitudes) - proclaims that loud declarations of “I’m washed-clean-by-the-blood-of-the-lamb!” thereupon give them an easy Get Out Of Jail Free card for any amount of sin. 

 

Like GOP office holders having four times the number of wives&concubines as Dem colleagues. Or the orgies attested to by three former GOP House members. Or almost every red state scoring far higher in every turpitude than almost any blue state. Or them adoring the most opposite-to-Jesus man any of us ever saw. So, let's be clear:

 

...The whole "I am washed clean and get off scot-free for all I've done, just because I howled 'I BELIEVE!'" thing is denounced by almost all top theologians in Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths, as the very worst moral travesty of all.

 In fact, to Christian scholars & sages, anyone banking on that free-to-do-anything-because-I’ll-be-redeemed card is committing among the very worst mortal sins… a mrtal sin directly against the Holy Spirit and hence NOT forgivable.  Look it up.

 

And okay, today on Wednesday I am on a panel for the Institute on Religion in the Age of Science (IRAS). So, yeah. While an amateur, I know a little about this.

 Does anyone at Fox?

  

Jimmy Carter’s Big Mistake... and the other fellow who they hate even more...

Great guy... and bad president? 

By now, all of you know that I take many unconventional views. Perhaps generating contrariness to supply my blog, Contrary Brin. Or to shake up calcified assumptions along a too-rigid, so-called ‘left-right spectrum.’ Or else sometimes just to entertain…

 

At other occasions, it’s a vent of pure frustration.  

 

(“You foooools! Why can’t you all seeeeee???”)

 

Okay, today we’ll have one of the latter kind. Because I want to talk about one of the most admirable human beings I ever heard of – (and I know a lot of history). Former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away at 100, just a few days ago.

 

Sure, you hear one cliché about Carter, repeated all over: Carter was an ineffective president, but clearly a wonderful person, who redefined the EX-presidency.

 

Folks thereupon go on to talk about the charitable efforts of both Carters, Jimmy and Rosalind. Such as the boost they gave to Habitat for Humanity, both with membership pushes and frequently swinging hammers personally, helping build houses for the poor and turning Habitat into a major concern, worldwide. That alone would be enough, compared to the selfishly insular after-office behaviors of every single Republican ex-president. Ever. And Habitat was just one of the Carters’ many fulfilling endeavors.

In fact, I have a crackpot theory (one of several that you’ll find only in this missive), that JC was absolutely determined not to die, until the very last Guinea Worm preceded him. Helping first to kill off that gruesome parasite. 

 

Haven’t heard of it? Look it up; better yet, watch some cringeworthy videos about this horrible, crippling pest! International efforts – boosted by the Carter Center – drove the Guinea Worm to the verge of eradication, with only 14 human cases reported in 2023 and 13 in 2022. And it’s plausible that the extinction wail of the very last one happened in ’24, giving Jimmy Carter release from his vow. (Unlikely? Sure, but I like to think so.)

 

Only, after-office goodness is not what’s in question here. Nor the fact that JC was one of Rickover’s Boys (I came close to being one!) who established the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet that restored deterrence in dangerous times and thus very likely prevented World War Three. 

 

Or that, in Georgia, he was the first southern governor ever to stand up, bravely denouncing segregation and prejudice in all forms. 

 

(Someone who taught Baptist Sunday School for 80+ years ought to have been embraced by U.S. Christians, but for the fact that Carter emphasized the Beatitudes and the words and teachings of Jesus, rather than the bile-and-blood-drenched, psychotic Book of Revelation that now eroticizes so many who betray their own faith with gushers of lava-like hate toward their neighbors.) 

 

But doesn’t everyone concede that Jimmy Carter was an exceptionally fine example of humanity?

 

In fact, among those with zero-sum personalities, a compliment like that assists their denigration of impractical-goodie eggheads! It allows them to smugly assert that such a generous soul must have also been gullible-sappy and impractical. 

 

(“A good person… and therefore, he must have been incompetent as president! While our hero, while clearly a corrupt, lying pervert and servant of Moscow, MUST - therefore - be the blessed agent of God!”)

 

Sick people. And so, no, I’ll let others eulogize ‘what a nice fellow Jimmy Carter was.’ 

 

Today, I’m here to assail and demolish the accompanying nasty and utterly inaccurate slander: “…but he was a lousy president.”

 

No, he wasn’t. And I’ll fight anyone who says it. Because you slanderers don’t know your dang arse from…

 

Okay, okay. Breathe.

Contrary Brin? Sure. 

But I mean it.

 

 

== Vietnam Fever ==

 

The mania goes all the way back to 1980. The utterly insipid “Morning in America” cult monomaniacally ignored the one central fact of that era…

 

… that the United States of America had fallen for a trap that almost killed it. 

 

A trap that began when a handsome, macho fool announced that “We will pay any price, bear any burden…” And the schemers in Moscow rubbed their hands, answering:

“Really? ANY price? ANY burden? How about a nice, big land war in the jungles of Southeast Asia?”

 

A war that became our national correlate to the Guinea Worm. Those of you who are too young to have any idea how traumatic the Vietnam War was… you can be forgiven. But anyone past or present who thought that everything would go back to 1962 bliss, when Kissinger signed the Paris Accords, proved themselves imbeciles. America was shredded, in part by social chasms caused by an insanely stupid war…

 

…but also economically, after LBJ and then Nixon tried for “Guns and Butter.” Running a full-scale war without inconveniently calling for sacrifices to pay for it. Now throw in the OPEC oil crises! And the resulting inflation tore through America like an enema. Nixon couldn’t tame it. Ford couldn’t tame it. Neither had the guts.

 

Entering the White House, Jimmy Carter saw that the economy was teetering, and only strong medicine would work. Moreover, unlike any president, before or since, he cared only about the good of the nation.

As one of you regulars John Viril put it: “Jimmy Carter was, hands down, the most ethically sound President of my lifetime. He became President in the aftermath of Vietnam and during the second OPEC embargo. Carter's big achievement is that he killed hyper-inflation before it could trigger another depression, to the point that we didn't see it again for 40 years. Ronald Reagan gets credit for this, but it was Carter appointing tight-money Fed chairman Paul Volker that tamed inflation.”

Paul Volcker (look him up!) ran the Federal Reserve with tough love, because Carter told Volcker: “Fix this. And I won’t interfere. Not for the sake of politics or re-election. Patch the leaks in our boat. Put us on a diet. Fix it.”

 

Carter did this knowing that a tight money policy could trigger a recession that would very likely cost him re-election. The medicine tasted awful. And it worked. Though it hurt like hell for 3 years, the post-Vietnam economic trauma got sweated out of the economy in record time. In fact, just in time for things to settle down and for Ronald Reagan to inherit an economy steadying back onto an even keel. His Morning in America.

 

Do you doubt that cause and effect? Care to step up with major wager stakes, before a panel of eminent economic historians? Because they know this and have said so. While politicians and media ignore them, in favor of Reagan idolatry.

 

Oh, and you who credit Reagan with starting the rebuilding of the U.S. military after Vietnam? Especially the stealth techs and subs that are the core of our peacekeeping deterrence? Nope. That was Carter, too.

 

== The peacemaker ==

No one else has succeeded. Trump assigned Jared Kushner to "solve the Middle East." The one and only thing he accomplished was to get the Saudis and Emirates to pony up literal billions directly and indirectly into Trump family wealth.

Bill Clinton - a very solid president, if not of Carter's moral stature - came that close to a major deal that would have given the Palestinians their state and Israel peace... till Yasser Arafat screwed the pooch by walking away with just one more teensy demand. Then one more... then...

But it was Jimmy Carter who actually pulled off a miracle, getting that Camp David handshake and deal and treaty between Egypt's Sadat and Israel's Begin. The deal that left Israel with distant IRAN as its worst enemy, and not its big and potentially lethal neighbor to the west.  Yet fools shrug off that huge accomplishment, that no one since has matched. Or even come close to matching.

Want to read some more unsung or too-little-sung Carter accomplishments?

 

== Restoring Trust ==

 

And then there’s another vital thing that Jimmy Carter did, in the wake of Nixon-Ford and Vietnam. He restored faith in our institutions. In the aftermath of Watergate and J. Edgar Hoover and the rest, he made appointments who re-established some degree of trust. And historians (though never pundits or partisan yammerers) agree that he largely succeeded, by choosing skilled and blemish free professionals, almost down the line.

 

And yes, let’s wager now over rates of turpitude in office, since then. Or indictments for malfeasance, between the parties! Starting with Nixon, all the way to Biden and Trump II. When the ratio of Republicans indicted and convicted for such crimes - compared to Democrats - approaches one hundred to one, is there any chance that our neighbors will notice… and decide that it is meaningful?

Not so long as idiots think that it makes them look so wise and cool to shake their heads and croon sadly “Both parties are the same!” You, who sing that song, you don’t sound wise. You sound like an ignoramus. But it’s never actively refuted.

Not so long as Democrats - tactical fools - habitually brag about the wrong things, and never mention facts like that one. The right ones.

 

 

== What about Reagan? ==

 

So. Yeah, yeah, you say. All of that may be true. But it comes to nothing, compared to Carter’s mishandling of the Iran Hostage Crisis.

 

Okay. This requires that – before getting to my main point - we first do an aside about Ronald Reagan. 

 

By now, the evidence is way more than circumstantial that Reagan committed treason during the Iran crisis. Negotiating through emissaries (some of whom admit it now!) for the Ayatollahs to hold onto the hostages till Carter got torched in the 1980 US election.  That’s a lot more than a ‘crackpot theory' by now… and yet I am not going in that direction, today.

 

Indeed, while I think his tenure set the modern theme for universal corruption of all subsequent Republican administrations, I have recently been extolling Ronald Reagan! See all the many ways in which he seemed like Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 1970, and almost an environmentalist Democrat! Certainly compared to today’s Foxite cult. 

 

Indeed, despite his many faults – the lying and corrupt officials, the AIDS cruelty and especially the triple-goddamned ‘War on Drugs’ – Reagan nevertheless, clearly wanted America to remain strong on the world stage. And to prevail against the Soviet ‘evil empire’…

… and I said as much to liberals of that era! I asked: “WTF else would you call something as oppressive and horrible as the USSR?” 

 

One thing I know across all my being. Were he around today, Ronald Reagan would spit in the eyes of every living Republican Putin-lover and KGB shill, now helping all the Lenin-raised “ex” commissars over there to rebuild – in all it’s evil – the Soviet Union. With a few altered symbols and lapel pins. As proved by the fervent support of NATO by today's Europeans.

 

But again, that rant aside, what I have to say about Carter now departs from Reagan, his nemesis. 

 

Because this is not about Carter’s failed re-election. He already doomed any hope of that, when he told Volcker to fix the economy.

 

No, I am talking about Jimmy Carter’s Big Mistake.

 

 

== Iran…  ==

 

So sure, I am not going to assert that Carter didn’t fumble the Hostage Crisis. 

 

He did. Only not in the ways that you think! And here, not even the historians get things right.

 

When the Shah fell, the fever that swept the puritan/Islamist half of Iranian society was intense and the Ayatollahs used that to entrench themselves. But when a mob of radicals stormed the American Embassy and took about a hundred U.S. diplomats hostage, the Ayatollahs faced a set of questions:

-       Shall we pursue vengeance on America – and specifically Carter – for supporting the Shah? Sounds good. But how hard should we push a country that’s so mighty? (Though note that post-Vietnam, we did look kinda lame.) 

-       What kind of deal can we extort out of this, while claiming “We don’t even control that mob!”

-       And what’s our exit strategy? 

During the subsequent, hellish year, it all seemed win-win for Khomeini and his clique. There was little we could do, without risking both the lives of the hostages and another oil embargo crisis, just as the U.S. economy was wobbling back onto its feet.

 

Yes, there was the Desert One rescue raid attempt, that failed because two helicopters developed engine trouble. Or – that’s the story. I do have a crackpot theory (What, Brin, you have another one?) about Desert One that I might insert into comments. If coaxed. No evidence, just a logical chain of thought.  (Except to note that it was immediately after that aborted raid that emissaries from the Islamic Republic hurried to Switzerland, seeking negotiations.)

 

But never mind that here. I told you that Jimmy Carter made one big mistake during the Iran Hostage Crisis, and he made it right at the beginning. By doing the right and proper and mature and legal thing.

 

 

== Too grownup. Too mature… ==

 

When that mob of ‘students’ took and cruelly abused the U.S. diplomats, no one on Earth swallowed the Ayatollah’s deniability claims of “it’s the kids, not me!” It was always his affair. And he hated Carter for supporting the Shah. And as we now know, Khomeini had promises from Reagan. So how could Carter even maneuver?

 

Well, he did start out with some chips on his side of the table. The Iranian diplomatic corps on U.S. soil. And prominent Iranians with status in the new regime -- those who weren’t Palavists seeking sanctuary at the time. And some voices called for those diplomats etc. to be seized, as trading chips for our people in Tehran…

 

…and President Jimmy Carter shook his head, saying it would be against international law. Despite the fact that holding our folks hostage was an act of war. Moreover, Carter believed in setting an example. And so, he diplomatically expelled those Iranian diplomats and arranged for them to get tickets home.

 

Honorable. Legal. And throwing them in jail would be illegal. And his setting an example might have worked… if the carrot had been accompanied by a big stick. If the adversary had not been in the middle of a psychotic episode. And… a whole lotta ifs.

 

I have no idea whether anyone in the Carter White House suggested this. But there was an intermediate action that might have hit the exact sweet spot. 

 

Arrest every Iranian diplomat and person on U.S. soil who was at all connected to the new regime… and intern them all at a luxury, beach-side hotel.

 

Allow news cameras to show the difference between civilized – even comfy - treatment and the nasty, foul things that our people were enduring, at the hands of those fervid ‘students.’ But above all, let those images – the stark contrast - continue on and on and on. While American jingoists screeched and howled for our Iranian captives to be treated the same way. While the president refused.

 

Indeed, it is the contrast that would have torn world opinion, and any pretense of morality, away from the mullahs. And, with bikini-clad Americans strolling by daily, plus margaritas and waffles at the bar, wouldn’t their diplomats have screamed about such decadent torture? And pleaded for a deal – a swap of ‘hostages’ - to come home? Or else, maybe one by one, might they defect?

 

We’ll never know. But it would have been worth a try. And every night, Walter Cronkite’s line might have been different.

 

And so, sure. Yeah. I think Carter made a mistake. And yeah, it was related to his maturity and goodness. So, I lied to you. Maybe he was too nice for the office. Too good for us to deserve.

 

 

== So, what’s my point? ==

 

I do have top heroes and Jimmy Carter is not one of them. I admired him immensely and thought him ill-treated by the nation that he served well. But to me he is second-tier to Ben Franklin. To Lincoln and to Jane Goodall and George Marshall.

 

But this missive is more about Carter’s despicable enemies. Nasty slanderers and liars and historical grudge-fabulators…

 

…of the same ilk as the bitchy slanderers who savagely attacked John Kerry, 100% of whose Vietnam comrades called him a hero, while 100% of the dastardly “swift-boaters” proved to be obscenely despicable preeners, who were never even there.

 

Or the ‘birthers’ who never backed up a single word, but only screeched louder, when shown many copies of Obama’s 1962 birth announcement in the Honolulu advertiser. Or the ass-hats who attacked John McCain and other decent, honorable Republicans who have fled the confederate madness, since Trump. Or the stop-the-steal shriekers who - likewise - never showed a shred of plausible evidence for their poor-loser whines.

 

Or the myriad monstrous yammerers who now attack all fact-using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 

 

Nutters and Kremlin-boys who aren’t worthy to shine the boots of a great defender-servant like Mark Milley.

 

Jeepers David… calm down. We get it. But take a stress pill, already or you might burst a vessel.

 

Okay, okay.  It’s just. We are about to embark on a journey of American self-discovery, when the very notions of democracy and enlightenment are under attack by living monsters. Monsters who know the power of symbolism vastly better than finger-wagging lib’ruls do, and who would deny us the inspiration of true heroes.

 

Heroes like Marshall. Like MLK. Like Greta Thunberg and Amory Lovins. 

 

And like the best president (by many metrics) of the last over-100 years.

== And a lagniappe about another maligned hero ==

 

I meant to stop there. But an item in today's news will make your MAGA risk a stroke. Today Joe Biden gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros.

Up there among the many despicable acts of Trumpism has been cheapening the PMOF into a pointed stick, to poke the eyes of the other party. Sure, it always had a bit of that element. But Trump turned it into a drop my pants and moon you all! episode of The Apprentice.

Many are shouting that Biden did that, today. And maybe mooning was part of it. Still, you haters need to ask yourself what it means that Soros has been howled-at more than almost anyone else on the hate lists of both Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin.

I don't have time to go into what could be a whole 'nother blog. But for decades, during their frequent rants against Soros, Foxites railed: "He's so dangerous and meddlesome that Soros personally toppled Ten Foreign Governments!!" 

To which I answer: "Well, okay, I'll give you that. While you exaggerate, Soros, through his meddlesome pro-democracy NGOs, did play some role in toppling a buncha foreign governments, but..."  

...but so confident are Fox-yammerers, in the dittohead stupidity of their viewers, that they know none of them will ever express God's great gift of curiosity... and ask: 

"Say, Sean or Glenn or Tucker or Jeanine or Jesse, could you please LIST them for us? The foreign governments that YOU credit that satanic meddler G. Soros with toppling?"

Oh, to see them run if that question were ever asked on-air. Sputter and distract. Signal for a commercial break.

Can YOU name them? I gave you a clue at the end of the 3rd paragraph of this lagniappe. And there are times when all gets revealed, simply by asking the right question. Examining your clichés.

Like when I started this episode, casting doubt upon the slanderous-but-standard cliché about a truly fine president. Jimmy Carter.