Feature of the Week
With the publication last week of our 500th Dittohead word, what could the Feature of the Week be other than our Dittohead Devil’s Dictionary Itself!
01.08.05 @ 09:11 PM EDT [link]

Easy Money
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." Abraham Lincoln. I happened to run into this quote just this week, and it applies perfectly to the topic we’ve been exploring. Despite Bush’s claims to be “addressing problems now rather than leaving them for future Presidents” (speaking of an imperative to invade Iraq), the exact opposite is the truth. Indeed, Bushism (what I’ve also called “Con-munism”) goes beyond “escaping responsibility.” It sins in two additional dimensions. First, it conceals its unwillingness to deal with today’s responsibilities by crowing that it is meeting today’s responsibilities. Bush’s statement earlier in this entry is a good example. The strategy can be described several ways, including “spin,” “positioning,” and “the best defense is a good offense.” I prefer the traditional term, “lying,” although I could live with a compromise word like “disinforming” (maybe I spent too many years in intelligence). Beyond just blustering past its unwillingness to face responsibility by giving lip service to facing responsibility, Bushism is guilty of a more heinous sin: profiting by denying that the responsibility even exists. Over and over, the Bush Administration advances programs that place blatantly immoral burdens on posterity, all the while feigning obliviousness to these burdens. Case in point is the debt and ever-growing deficit that feeds it. Point out the immorality of the deficit, and the Administration’s response is to offer unconvincing aspirations to “cut the deficit in half,” as if that in any way addressed the question. If you’re doing something immoral, doing it more slowly doesn’t constitute morality. The environment provides unscrupulous politicians an even greater opportunity to gain a flood of campaign contributions from interests profiting by avoiding the measures absolutely required for the sustainability of our society. These measures can be boiled down to the term “regulations.” The “modern” GOP has gotten enormous mileage by positioning itself as the anti-regulation party. It constantly trumpets terms like “getting government off people’s backs,” “regulatory burden,” and “jobs.” Bushism is the latest illustration of the difficulties that human societies face in meeting the challenge of limiting unrestrained exploitation of finite resources. The logically obvious and increasingly apparent imperative for tempered growth creates opportunities for naysaying Dittoheads to profit from the dangerous appeal of their siren song. Historically, all societies have faced this challenge, and the ones that listened to their Dittoheads were extinguished.
01.07.05 @ 10:54 PM EDT [link]

500 and Counting!
Let’s take a moment to mark an important SherWright.com milestone – our 500th Dittohead word! No immediate danger of running out, either – a reasonable supply in the Holding Tank and no less than 125 in the Waiting Muse queue. Thanks the Bush Administration for constantly offering up new words just begging to be defined, and for the general inspiration this Den of Dittoheads provides. It’s just what’s needed for motivation during these January mornings on the train in the dark. That’s it for now – working on something particularly fun for later this week. Thanks again for your support – my site traffic report is just as inspiring as the antics of our Rush-ian Administration!
01.06.05 @ 07:59 PM EDT [link]

Smokescreen!
The headlines today are about how the House of Representative Republicans have backed off on giving their Majority Leader Tom DeLay a free pass on losing his leadership role if he is indicted. It’s hilarious (and maybe carefully planned) that this serves as a very effective smokescreen hiding what the headline would otherwise be, that the House GOP has adopted the rules reported in our 1/3 entry, Tying Up the Ethics Issue. It’s hilarious (and maybe carefully planned) because this has allowed them to crow about how backtracking on Tom was a strong stand in support of ethics. One GOP Representative is quoted as saying “I feel like we all just took a bath.” This backtrack was a diversion from the main thrust on the ethics front, a significant hobbling of the ethics process, as we discussed in the earlier entry. As you will recall, the new rule is that a tie among the parties quashes the investigation. The angle they used to sell this significant weakening the rule was “presumption of innocence.” While this sounds nice, it has no bearing on the reality of the situation. Presumption of innocence has nothing to do with whether or not an investigation goes forward. It relates to what happens after the investigation is complete. Had these rules been in place before been followed before, three investigations that later led to censures would have been quashed. This is prima facie evidence that the new rules will cause the dropping of ethical lapses that otherwise would have been proven. Here is what GOP crowing about how the new rules strengthen ethics investigations is like. Imagine that a city achieves a record conviction rate under a particular district attorney. Then imagine what it would do for the state of justice in that city if the reaction of the City Council is to fire that crusading DA and to change the rules so that grand juries require unanimous agreement from the relatives of the accused for an indictment to be handed down. The result is no trials and more criminals on the street. I’m reminded of that staple of cop shows where the Captain tells the detective “drop the case or I’ll have your badge!” Am I exaggerating? First, the chairman who allowed the successful investigations to go forward is being replaced. Second, there is a clear conflict of interest in requiring that at least one Republican cross party lines to allow the investigation to go forward. As just seen by the example being made of the Ethics Committee Chairman, a Republican doing that can expect reprisals. It puts members in the position of having a very strong incentive to cover up ethics lapses rather than pursuing them, in the same way that having only relatives of the suspect on a grand jury would preclude indictments. And we all know that covering up ethics lapses just makes for a bigger mess when it all finally comes out. Getting back to our example, the only perverse benefit the city would gain by setting up a system that virtually guarantees no indictments is the ability to make the bogus claim that “the city is safer! Look, there hasn’t been a single conviction!” And this is exactly what House Republicans have in mind.
01.05.05 @ 08:14 PM EDT [link]

Dittoheads Emerge when Limits Loom
Environmentalism is a particular hot button for Dittoheads because their perceived entitlement originates not due to accident of birth (as with immigration) or constitutional right (as with RKBA), but directly from God Himself. Dittoheads are convinced that Earth’s resources (and indeed, the entire Universe) were fashioned and are maintained expressly for the benefit of Mankind. They see the environmentalist’s core axiom - that these resources will inevitably be exhausted unless growth is constrained – as heretical. After years of considering this question, I’ve come to believe that the right wing’s faith-based sense of entitlement to all of Earth’s resources is the single most dangerous challenge facing humanity. Of all the challenges before us, it is the one that is both least disputable and most disputed. It cannot be logically contested that at some point we will exhaust the finite resources on which modern society depends. We can say with virtual certainty that at some point in the future our descendents won’t be driving down to the gas station to tank up. They’ll either have an alternative way to run their cars or they’ll be back to a non-automotive lifestyle out of the 19th century. We have a moral responsibility for ensuring that a sufficient proportion of the bounty of cheap fossil fuel energy is invested to find alternatives that cost the same proportion of today’s family budget (or better). In other words, society needs to start weaning itself from limited resources before those resources are gone, if we are to meet the responsibility laid on us by the Founding Fathers to “ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” This is a challenge because unprincipled individuals gain easy attention, wealth, and power by saying that such investments and the sacrifice of opportunity they represent aren’t really necessary. And they’ll make their argument by saying that we’re all entitled by God to use His creation any way we choose. That’s why we have Dittoheads, and that’s why their legions are growing. The most dangerous are the Dittoheads - and the politicians who pander to them - who, ignoring the many biblical lessons on wealth and stewardship, actually believe that consumption is a God-given right.
01.04.05 @ 08:23 PM EDT [link]

Angry White Entitled Dittoheads
If one were to take a poll of the country on perceptions of those who relish their identity as Dittoheads, one term would likely be at the top of the list: “angry white male.” That’s not a particularly controversial statement, right? If you don’t agree, I suggest you do some remedial listening to the Rush Show. Accepting for the sake of argument that the majority of Rush’s faithful are white, male, and angry, let’s ask the question: what are they so angry about? I’ve done some field work in this area, and my research has led me to the conclusion that the issue is entitlement. Pick any issue that Dittoheads are worked up about and you’ll find at the core of this issue an expectation that they’re entitled to some benefit that is being threatened. Take immigration, for example. Their perception is that illegal immigrants are soaking up the jobs, taxpayer-funded government benefits, and plain old attention from politicians that they feel is their due as Real Americans. Or take gun rights. They feel that the Second Amendment (despite its references to State Militias) guarantees them the right to have and to hold any piece of lethal hardware they might happen in any particular situation to feel like having close at hand. They see any limits whatsoever on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (which they abbreviate as RKBA) as a violation of their right (also called entitlement) under the Constitution. Dittohead anger is particularly apparent over the environment. Exhibits A-Z are the Rush quotes SherWright.com has spotlighted over the last couple of weeks. Tomorrow let’s explore why.
01.03.05 @ 07:54 PM EDT [link]

Tying Up the Ethics Issue
It is reported that the Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is considering changes to rules for the House Ethics Panel. Presumably they now see congressional ethics as a question of only passing importance and have moved to reduce the chance that the House will be diverted from more pressing issues like increasing military spending and permanentizing tax cuts. The proposed new rules are said to require that at least one member of the Ethics panel who belongs to the same party as the suspected ethics violator has to vote to proceed with the investigation. This is doubtless inspired by the bipartisanship demonstrated in pursuit of similar issues, for example the Clinton impeachment. Even with this rule, however, there is a danger that an ethics investigation might actually move forward. Consider the case of Representative Joel Hefley of Colorado, the current chairman of the House Ethics Panel. He recently shocked and disappointed his party colleagues for allowing the issuance of Panel reports critical of Tom DeLay. Investigations allowed by the Panel eventually caused DeLay to be censured not once but twice last year. It is very likely that Hefley will be stripped of his post as a result, but is that really enough to protect the reputation of the House from embarrassing ethics investigations? Clearly not! SherWright.com is thus offering a modest proposal for a more effective rules change, a change that would further eliminate the possibility of a “rogue” investigation. Our proposal is what might be called a “faith based” proposal, echoing a technique used back when the judiciary routinely employed faith-based determinations of guilt before it was subsumed by atheism. Here’s what we had in mind: the accuser should have his or her hands tied to his or her ankles and they should then be thrown into a body of water (say, the Tidal Basin). If they float, the accused is innocent and the investigation must be quashed. If they sink, the case can proceed. While this might be seen as requiring a certain level of sacrifice on the part of those who feel an investigation needs to be pursued, it’s clearly a small price to pay to ensure a high standard of ethics in the House of Representatives of the United States of America!
01.02.05 @ 08:09 PM EDT [link]