Weblog: November/December 2002

I'm reading over a Federal Judge's finding that the government can detain accused "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla indefinitely because the president "is authorized under the Constitution and by law to direct the military to detain enemy combatants." And it brings me back to a question that has nagged at me ever since we declared war on terrorism after 9/11.

For starters, there's the uncomfortable legal muddiness of cases like this one, as well as the issue surrounding our detention of all those al Qaeda POWs at Gitmo in Cuba. The Bushcroft crowd has argued that we're at war, and that we should treat suspected terrorists according to the rules of war (except that we aren't abiding by the Geneva Convention because the prisoners aren't part of a sanctioned government war force – and if I butchered the explanation of this, forgive me, because it's all very complicated and a bit confusing for me). On the other side we have a legion of Constitutional rights advocates lamenting that the government is throwing our civil liberties under the bus in the name of national security (and that's actually pretty generous characterization, given what we know about John Ashcroft – a better argument might be that the government saw in 9/11 an excuse to do what it has wanted to do all along, but I digress).

These are valid concerns and represent a crucially important challenge that we as a society must negotiate – are civil rights and national security mutually exclusive goals? In thinking about it, ask yourself this. How much power do you want Ashcroft to have in shaping how the US deals with those who violate his version of the law? I mean, say you come to the attention of the government for something you may or may not have done, and they don't have enough evidence to actually charge or convict you, but they know you did it. How comfortable are you with the whole detain-indefinitely-without-counsel thing now? If you aren't nervous yet, you might want to consider that the administration is hoping to get rid of that pesky Miranda Rights nuisance that prevents law enforcement officers from employing "coercive interrogation" tactics.

But there's another question that I think disturbs me almost as much, and it goes to the whole idea of declaring war on al Qaeda. To wit, what has al Qaeda ever done to deserve the credibility and status inherently conveyed by a declaration of war? Humanity has always been a warlike species, and America, like most other nations, has celebrated warriors throughout our history. Washington, Father of the Country? War hero. JFK, the hope of a generation? War hero. Jackson, Grant, Ike, Powell, Lee, Stormin' Norman, and I could go on for days. We revere war heroes (and whether we do so too much for our own good I'll leave for another day), and "warrior" is a term that connotes heroism, bravery, strength – all qualities we truly and universally respect in other people and seek to emulate ourselves. In fact, if you get right down to it, the values that underpin the word "hero" are pretty similar to those we ascribe to warriors.

So when you declare war, you are inherently conferring the warrior connotation on your enemy, even if he's evil right down to his skivvies. Whether you laud that enemy, respect him for his skills, deride him as the devil incarnate, whatever, you have accorded him a measure of credibility and status.

Does bin Laden deserve this status? Mohammed Atta? The semi-anonymous, box-cutter-wielding thugs on those flights whose noble task it was to keep unarmed civilians out of the cockpit? The suicide bombers preying almost daily on innocent civilians in Israel? Do we want to grant these vermin the same status we have in the past accorded to the likes of Cornwallis, Santa Anna, and Geronimo?

Seriously, who is Osama bin Laden more like? Erwin Rommel or Josef Mengele? Yamamoto or Jim Jones? Tecumseh or Vlad the Impaler? Shaka Zulu or Harris & Klebold? Baron von Richtoven or Jack the Ripper? Alexander the Great or Al Capone?

Julius Ceasar or Timothy McVeigh?

I understand that I'm simplifying a bit to make a point. Some war heroes can be classified as mass murderers if you strip away the sanction of official war and just look at body count, and some more despicable types technically belong on both lists (Hitler and Stalin, anyone?) But there's a real issue here, and it directs our policy toward terror in ways that ought to trouble us. What implications would it have for our approach to the whole terror problem if we classified al Qaeda as a criminal organization, something along the lines of the Gambino crime family or the Medellin drug cartel (oops, wait, we declared war on drugs, too, didn't we?)

Ultimately al Qaeda's greatest victory might not prove to be that they took down the towers, but that they set in motion a series of events that caused us to take down our own Constitution, and for those of us concerned about such things the "criminal" route probably seems a lot cleaner and in line with the principles that our government was built on.

But in the end, it just gripes the hell out of me that Bush, his half-witted GOP cronies, and the appeasement-minded Democratic "opposition" have had the gall to elevate mass murderers to the status of warrior. If it has to wait until your back is turned, or if it only has courage enough to strike at the weak, the unarmed, and the innocent, it's not a warrior. It's a gutless coward and a criminal.

And it's high time we started treating them that way.

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Have you seen the new Cadillac ads on TV? The ones featuring Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll"? Damn, those ads just rock, don't they? Except that they're some of the worst ads on television, and it has nothing to do with Zep or selling out or anything like that.

The spots juxtapose a gorgeous, mint 1959 El Dorado with some of Cadillac's new models (the CTS, XLR, Escalade and Escalade EXT) in an attempt to "leverage" (as we say in the corporate world) the legendary style of the '50s, when cars were bigger than life. They're using the classic Caddy, which we associate with all kinds of rose-colored Americana, to "give the rub" (as they say in the "sports entertainment" biz) to the new breed. They're putting the two together and asking you to conclude that, damn, these new Caddies are every bit as stylish and cool as the originals. They're American classics!

Which is fine, except that the new breed of Cadillacs are as sterile, bloodless, and devoid of originality as everything else on the road these days. Yeah, the Escalade is popular as hell and has become something of a status symbol, especially among pro athletes and other rich criminal types. But that doesn't make it stylish or original or anything else except expensive and popular. The Escalade is, if I might wax metaphorical for a second, sort of an automotive Britney Spears. Do you really think TV ads in 40 years will be holding up the Escalade as representative of some kind of Golden Age of automotive design? Me, either.

In contrast, the old Cadillacs were definitive statements of the American personality, with unapologetically elaborate lines and a commitment to being unlike anything else on the road. If you want to know a thing or two about America in the '50s, look at the cars we drove. We're a culture that always worshiped the road, and the people who designed the old Caddy featured in the commercial approached the task with a sense of reverence not unlike that of the artisans chosen to work on the majestic cathedrals of Medieval Europe.

I can't help thinking that a lot of folks watching these commercials are reacting in precisely the opposite way Cadillac would like them to – I mean, if you were trying to prove to me that the 2002 Caddy was a pale, pathetic shadow of what it once was, these are the exact ads you'd present me with (except instead of "Rock and Roll" you'd substitute in something from Elton John's latest CD so as to really emphasize how the mighty have fallen).

Then again, maybe the campaign is working brilliantly for the good folks at General Motors. I'm hardly the barometer you use when trying to gauge the masses, and we aren't the people we once were, are we? Nope, once we were a society that produced fabulously cool things. Now we produce ordinary things and create ads that tell us how fabulously cool they are.

If perception is reality, then it's all pretty much the same effect, huh?

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A couple folks, responding to my last little missive on the whole church/state debacle, wrote to point out that the Framers never mentioned "separation of church and state" in the Constitution, and to explain that the now-hallowed phrase came from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. In that letter he stated that the Constitution created a "wall of separation between church and state."

So, in light of these kind reminders, and because I don't want readers to think I'm dumb or anything, let me elaborate upon my earlier remarks. To wit:

Yes, yes, I know. The issue here has to do with the whole concept of "legislative intent," the interpretive framework which is historically critical to the resolution of legislative conflict and confusion. When we can't figure out exactly what a piece of law is trying to say (always a problem when lawyers are charged with the task of communicating), we look (in theory) to the record to see what they said during deliberations on the law in question. In this case, we're reaching a bit further for Framer intent, I realize.

Now, we know what the Framers wrote in the 1st Amendment, and we also know what Article VI, Clause 3 has to say:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The Danbury letter is presumed, at least on my part, to represent a Jeffersonian elaboration, and I don't see anything terribly wrong with examining the larger body of a statesman's work to determine his intent, especially since those who would pronounce an official fundamentalist theocracy on us in a heartbeat are fond of looking for any little tidbit they can misconstrue in favor of their own narrow dogma.

The Danbury letter clearly demonstrates that the Framers intended to erect a "wall" against state establishment of religion. I wish to hell they had put this kind of language in the actual Constitution and been explicit about what they meant, but frankly, the failing here is the same as failings we find elsewhere in the Constitution – the Framers made way too many generous assumptions about the people they were writing for and about. They assumed a higher intellect and better literacy on the part of the public, and worse, they assumed that people would inherently want to be smart, well-informed, well-educated, etc. A noble assumption, to be sure, but not one that history has done much to validate.

If these assumptions had proven accurate, we'd have a very different landscape of governance than we do today. Instead, we have to worry about the political clout of people who, on the one hand, hate intolerant fundamentalist theocracies elsewhere in the world with a violent, occasionally genocidal passion, but on the other, seem incapable of grasping that the Afghan word "Taliban," roughly translated into English, means "Christian nation."

But in case I'm still being vague, let's put it this way: people who care about their religion have no better friend than a government that cares not at all.

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In a bit of satire over on the Daedalnexus, Brian Angliss tries desperately to make the case that "Rather than fight[ing] faith-based programs for the poor just because they're faith-based, we should all be signing up!" Which is all in good fun, and makes a good point. But if you really wanted to have some fun with the faith-based bozos running the country, here's what you'd do.

First, you have to understand that the Framers of the Constitution set all this in motion by being too damned vague. I mean, separation of Church and State 96 what the hell does that really mean, anyway? We have these problems before us today because Jefferson, Madison and Co. didn't have the basic good sense to insist on specificity, which is odd, given that all the Founding Fathers were all pretty clearly fundamentalists. As, one assumes, were the Founding Mothers. They just toss terms like "God" and "Church" and "separation" around like we all know what they mean, when clearly we don't.

So here's what we have to do. Let's forget separation of Church and State and accept that we are One Nation Under God, In God We damned sure Do Trust, and that we are a Christian nation (this part is crucial). Let's get past all that soulless secular humanism and By God establish a state religion. Better yet, let's charge Congress with the job, since so many of the members of that august body have thought long and hard on the subject already. I would say let President Bush be in charge, but he's got plenty on his hands already. Besides, he'd get final say-so on signing it into law or vetoing it, right?

Here's how it works. The U.S. will adopt as our national religion that which Congress can agree on sufficiently to pass by a two-thirds majority, and by this I mean they must pass each plank of the resolution by that margin. Understand, "God" is way too vague, and you can't very well build a moral society around vagaries. We have to insist that Congress agree on what God is and how He (She) should be worshipped.

For instance, we'll need Congress to decide whether the Bible is intended as a metaphorical guide or as literal, journalistic fact. Was Mary literally a virgin? Did Abraham literally live 900 years? Did Moses literally tie his ass to a tree and walk 40 miles? These are not small issues, and if they are settled by legislative fiat we risk another millennium of sectarian strife.

Other issues we'll need Congress to rule on:

• Should baptism be by sprinkling as an infant or by immersion once one is born again? And, how quickly can we set in place an emergency re-baptism program for all those people who had it done wrong the first time?
• Is God a man, a woman, both, or neither?
• What race is God? This will be important when we do physical and artistic representations of Him/Her/It.
• What about those places where the Bible appears to contradict itself, as in Genesis 1 & 2? Are we to take these as tests by God, or error by monks, or what?
• How old is that darned Earth, anyway? I mean, it's important to know what to tell kids about dinosaurs if the world is only 6000 years old.
• We'll need a plan to transfer power from the President to Jesus when He makes his triumphant return to Earth after the Rapture.
• We'll also need a policy of engagement for Armageddon. When do we launch the nukes, and at who? Once we know who's on God's side and who's on the side of Satan, shouldn't we just go ahead and launch a pre-emptive strike?
• What the hell do we do about those damned Jews, who have made clear that they aren't on board with Jesus as the Son of God? Do we wait and let Jesus deal with them himself or should we set about making them either believe what we believe or leave?
• And don't even get me started on Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and other varieties of Satanists. If we're truly a Christian land, is it right that their blasphemy should be tolerated, and worse, that they should be able to benefit from social programs paid for by Right-thinking Christians?
• Will the Office of Homeland Godliness be a Cabinet-level appointment reporting to the President? Should the President be the de jure head of the Church? Should it be a separate branch of government insulated from the meddling influence of future secular legislators, and especially from Satanic minions on the Supreme Court? Or, for that matter, should we rework the government and Constitution so that we replace the democracy with a Christian theocracy?
• What should our foreign policy toward non-Christian nations be like? Some of them are Godless, but strategically important (Britain, Canada, anybody with oil, etc.) Should a nation's relationship with God be a consideration in conferring most-favored-nation status?
• There's also the woman problem. Are they to be submissive to their husbands, as dictated by some, or are they to be accepted as full partners in God's Church of America? Can they be ministers, for example? And while we're on the subject of troublesome sorts, is the Church going to take the "accepting" stance toward gays or are they all going to hell? If the latter, should we get them on their way or let God deal with them in His own good time?

Give me another hour or two and I'll come up with more of these issues, but you get the idea. The success of a faith-based government hinges on getting these issues settled and chiseled into stone sooner rather than later. If Congress leaves wiggle room and unanswered questions we'll be at each other's throats until the Second Coming, and I'm pretty sure that's not what the Framers intended.

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Most of us have no idea how much unauthorized and unwanted crap there is on our computers. We know that a lot of sites we visit place cookies on our machines, and in some cases this adds up to a good thing, making our visits to sites go more smoothly.

But there's also a category of invasive, parasitic software called spyware. You didn't ask for it, it does you no good, and you don't want it on your machine. It sits there and reports back to the mothership about your surfing behavior, quietly invading your privacy, and perhaps worse.

A related form of intrusion involves the "browser hijack." If you've ever had your home page reset to a site you've never heard of, and then got to snooping around only to discover that your whole system has been infested by this company's software, you know what I mean. The worst offenders I have encountered are HuntBar and Xupiter. I picked up Xupiter simply by visiting the 1wrestling.com site – I didn't even click on an ad or anything. Just all of a sudden my home page is Xupiter.com and an hour later I had still been unable to scrub the filth from my system.

So I appealed to a computer-savvy co-worker, and she tracked down some freeware to help me deal with the problem. It's called SpyBot, and I heartily recommend that anybody who spends any time at all online download it, install it, and run it regularly. The first time I ran this program it nearly blew my mind. In addition to the Xupiter crap that I already knew about, my system had been infested by spyware from vermin like Avenue A, Hitbox, Advertising.com, Enliven, and a bunch of others I can't recall.

So I cranked up SpyBot, it took a couple minutes sleuthing my machine, and zap – all the bad stuff was IDed and 86ed (although stuff like Hitbox is ungodly persistent, and has managed to reinstall itself every time I check – I suspect I'm picking it up when I visit MP3.com, but can't be sure).

The larger issue is political, of course – we need laws that will put those who spawn spyware and browserjacking software into prison, right alongside the spammers and telemarketers. But until then, download SpyBot and at least clean up your own system. Depending on your needs and level of tech sophistication, you might also check out these sites and programs.

• http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/
• http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/

Meanwhile, I have this fantasy. I'm at a party. I'm talking to some guy I just got introduced to, so to be polite I say, "so, what do you do for a living?" And he says, "oh, I'm the owner of Xupiter.com." And I drag his punk ass outside and stomp him until my feet hurt.

Hey, not all our dreams are enlightened, you know?

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