There are things that make me so angry that I tend to not even write about them. I suspect that some readers will find this amusing, because I seem to be angry much of the time. And that’s true, so what I just said should be given the proper amount of weight. One of those things is the pretend Benghazi scandal. I have to give the Republicans high marks for tenacity, but this is simply an outrage. There is no scandal in this matter and people like McCain are losing much of their unearned credibility.

An issue that makes me even more angry is almost everything about the Bradley Manning case. The worst that any reasonable person can say about this young man is that he should have done a better job of being a whistle blower. And I agree. But he’s a kid. And he is a classic whistle blower: a disillusioned true believer. Perhaps he should be punished, but surely he has already been punished enough.

The more we know about the military justice system’s treatment of this kid, the more disgusting it is. There is no doubt that the military are trying to send a strong message to any other potential whistle blower: we will torture you long before we prove that you’ve done anything wrong. For that is what has been going on: the military has been torturing Bardley Manning. Of course, it isn’t just to send a message; they have also been hoping that he would roll over on Julian Assange.

Glenn Greenwald published an article in The Guardian Friday, Bradley Manning: a Tale of Liberty Lost in America. In it, he gives a really good overview of the case in a very short article. But he makes a really stark contrast between how the current administration has chosen to dispense justice:

I’m actually quite used to the United States government meting out injustice. The biggest thing that bothers me here—the core of why I find this subject hard to even talk about—is the triviality of the information leaked. This is the information that we classify?! How exactly does a democratic government justify keeping stuff like this from the people?

Many have tortured and killed innocent people while working for the government. But these people must not only be forgiven, we must pretend they never did anything wrong. No Truth and Reconciliation Commission for America! That would be wrong. But a kid releases a bunch of documents that embarrass a few people and document what we already knew that the Afghanistan War was going poorly? Well, that’s treason!

This kind of bullshit that makes me ashamed of our government.

Dean Baker, like any great thinker, has certain ideas that he pushes. (More on that later today.) One of those ideas is that an aging population is not bad for retirement programs. The common refrain from people, who are not nearly as smart and knowledgeable as Baker, is that fewer workers for each retiree will bankrupt the system. Baker notes that this is not true because the effects of productivity gains swamp the effects of an aging population.

Today, he wrote, Ross Douthat Thinks Sub-Saharan Africa Is the Richest Region on Earth. This is a typically sarcastic title from Baker—I’ve come to think that I have never in my life known anyone as sarcastic as this man. What he is doing is making fun of Douthat, “Douthat seems to believe that we face some terrible fate if the population of the United States stagnates or even declines.”

Dean Baker then goes on to discuss why a falling US population would be a good thing. He notes that a 20% decrease in our population would decrease our carbon footprint by 20%—without doing anything! And if there is one thing you can say about the United States, it is that we are good at doing nothing.

The main thing is that Ross Douthat, like most commentators—especially on the right—is worrying about a nonexistent problem. Baker shows this by presenting a graph that charts the funding effects on Social Security of an aging population as well as productivity growth.

Now that Dean Baker has drawn a picture, maybe people like Douthat will finally get it.

Update (3 December 2012 1:27 pm)

Matt Yglesias takes Douthat to task for “condemning the ‘decadence’ of people responding to the situation that actually exists.” It is a fun read and shows that Douthat is wrong even if you accept his claim that we need more babies.

One hundred and fifty-three years ago they hanged John Brown in Charles Town, Virginia. On that morning before his execution, he wrote, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.” As ambivalent as I am regarding Brown’s actions, no truer words have ever been written.

I used to think that the Civil War was not inevitable. It’s clear that the institution of slavery was holding the south back. My thinking was that eventually southern whites would see this. There was no doubt that I was wrong. The problem is at the core of how slavery was implemented. In the early days of western settlement of America, slavery was not race based. This caused a problem for the ownership class: the lower classes had a nasty habit of joining together and demanding things the rich don’t like to provide for anyone but themselves: rights and pay. Although there were doubtless many and varied reasons for race-based slavery, one was to solve this problem. By making slavery apply only to blacks, they cut any solidarity between poor whites and blacks. And it made poor whites feel better: at least they weren’t slaves.

This always reminds me of this story that Anderson tells in Mississippi Burning:

“If you ain’t any better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?”

I think that the vested interests of rich white profits and poor white self-respect would have kept slavery alive in the south until its end was forced. And look at the effect of emancipation. It led to Jim Crow. When it was ended, we had the racist “drug war”—a term that first shows up only a few years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So I think that John Brown simply had a clearer view on the problem than just about anyone else.

I highly recommend that you listen to Sarah Vowell’s exceptional history of the song John Brown’s Body. It is live and very funny.

There was a good discussion of filibuster reform on Up with Chris Hayes. But some of it was confusing. There were two pro-filibuster guests on the panel. Richard Arenberg and Alan Frumin who both argued energetically for the filibuster. But I found their arguments strangely uncompelling. I was expecting that they would have some great points that I had never thought about. This was not true in the least.

Their argument came down to one very simple point: the Senate is a place where minority rights are cherished. Or something. The truth was the argument wasn’t clear, but it was more or less, “Minority rights are good!” And I agree. Minority rights are good. But this isn’t really minority rights. This is just the minority party using its leverage to stop the majority party from doing anything at all.

I get it. At one time, the filibuster really was used only in extreme cases where the minority was really against something. But the following graph tells you everything you need to know about the modern filibuster:

Note that anyone would have to be crazy to say that “both sides do it!” Clearly, there is something entirely new over the last four years.

What no one on the panel mentioned was that the Senate is already a non-democratic chamber of the legislature. What’s more: it is heavily biased towards the Republicans. So the use of the filibuster by the Republicans is just adding insult to injury. Another thing no one mentioned (Dare they?) is that regardless of what happens, as soon as the Republicans control both the White House and the Senate, they will not only reform the filibuster; they will eliminate it. Republicans play for keeps. So it is fine to say we ought to keep the filibuster, but it isn’t up to the Democrats. The only question that is up to the Democrats is whether they will be allowed to legislate for a couple of years before the Republicans take back control of the Senate.

The most interesting thing in the whole discussion was how Arenberg and Frumin, when it comes down to it, agree with all the proposed changes to the filibuster. Their only concern is that once it is changed it will be easy to change it again, thus leading to its end. But as I said: this is inevitable regardless. And it shows their political naivete that they think it is otherwise.