I just watched a short lecture that Noam Chomsky gave in support of his book Failed States at West Point. The talk is about Just War theory. I’ve never given the concept that much thought. I had always thought of it in the context of Catholic scholars like Augustine and Aquinas. But apparently, it dates back much further than that — at least to the Mahabharata, which was probably written about three thousand years ago, but only written down about 2,500 years ago. It’s not surprising that people have long thought about this. Everyone wants to believe that their wars are just.

Chomsky goes through a lot of discussion about what different scholars have had to say on the subject and he comes to a fairly obvious conclusion: what’s considered a “just” war is a reflection of the mores of the time and place. And it’s worse than that, because the scholars seem to all do the same thing: pick some war and define it as just. There is one point where a scholar picked the Afghanistan War, claiming that only hardcore pacifists and crazy people would think that wasn’t a Just War. But of course, the writer was just showing his own biases; there were huge numbers of people around the world who disagreed.

The main point is that it will always be this way. No one ever looks at the criteria objectively, determines that a war would be just, and then goes to war. Just War theory is a way to justify wars that are going on or ones that some group wants to start. And most of all, it is a way for military leaders to think that they are involved in a noble endeavor, even when they clearly aren’t. So it was interesting to see Chomsky at West Point in April 2006 — when the Iraq War was still fairly popular.

The most interesting part of the talk is the questions and answers. The cadets are very well behaved, but they clearly don’t agree with Chomsky. How could they? He’s telling them exactly the opposite of what they’ve been led to believe: that their cause is not just. But it’s quite clear that most of them didn’t understand what Chomsky’s main talk was about: Just War theory is nothing but rationalization. So we get a couple of questions about whether Chomsky doesn’t think this or that fact justifies this or that war on the basis of Just War theory.

I have no idea how the cadets take to his answers, but they are demolished. This is especially true with the last question. A cadet asks if the Iraq War isn’t justified because of Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses. Up to that point, Chomsky had stayed on point and focused on Just War theory, saying in effect, “We can argue about whether that ought to be done, but Just War theory gives us no guidance whatsoever.” But I think he’s a little annoyed by the last question because it shows such ignorance about the history of the United States and Iraq. Hussein was put to death for crimes he committed with our support. And now we are using those to justify going to war?!

I’ve always found the efforts of the government and the military to justify their wars as a pathetic exercise. I understand that the cadets really believe all this stuff. But the facts are clear. Every time a US president goes to war, we hear about how reluctant he is to do so. It’s such nonsense! It’s almost never necessary to go to war. It wasn’t necessary in Afghanastan — much less Iraq. But there will always be people around making the argument that war is necessary. I’d rather we were just honest about it. We want some resource or we just can’t help it or whatever. But I’ve been hearing how we go to war to protect democracy and for humanitarian reasons my whole life. And it is never true. It’s nice to think that Chomsky might have opened an eye or two at West Point. But I doubt it.

Brian Beutler wrote a very interesting article, but because of the headline, I let it sit in my RSS queue for a while, Republicans Accept Mass Killings. That’s Why Gun Control Advocates Must Get Graphic. I knew at least part of what he was getting at. Ben Carson recently made a statement that he had treated many gunshot wounds, “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” And I was afraid that Beutler might be calling for the gun control community to do what the anti-choice people do and show graphic, disgusting images. And that is more or less his argument, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds.

Before getting into it, let me counter what Carson said. His framing is wrong — I would say disingenuous, but he’s a seriously clueless guy. On the issue of guns, conservatives have gone far past the idea of a slippery slop and gone to a frictionless cliff. Implicit in what Carson is saying is that if we close the gun show loophole, private ownership of guns will be gone from the United States. It’s not surprising that he thinks this. The NRA has spent the last couple of decades arguing against any restrictions for this reason. If flamethrowers were legal, people would now be against doing anything to regulate them.

What Beutler pointed out is that there is another hidden assumption in Carson’s claims or the less obviously nutty claims of Jeb Bush. They look at the roughly 10,000 gun homicides and roughly 20,000 gun suicides each year. And they think that they are nothing. They are a minor issue that we should do absolutely nothing about because any measure to strengthen gun regulations is a much greater threat to us. It’s a curious argument, because pretty much every other peer country has far greater firearm regulation and they haven’t lost their liberty.

So Beutler thinks that we need to make this argument plain. He’s not suggesting that we march around with gruesome images of gun fatalities like the anti-choice groups do with large fake photos of abortion. But he is suggesting that we not hide the results of gun violence in reporting on it. When the results are not shown, just like in our wars since Vietnam, it has a propagandistic effect. It sanitizes it and makes it all about statistics. Note that in Ben Carson’s case, he was not treating people who had their heads exploded by a bullet; in the vast majority of cases, he was working on people who were wounded and not killed by bullets.

I’m not sure that I agree with Beutler that this would make any difference, however. The truth is that gun rights advocates will say the same thing that abortion rights advocates say: we all know the reality. Of course, look how different this is. In the case of abortion rights, we are talking about real people being negatively affected — in the case of late term abortions, we are talking about a matter of life and death. In the case of gun rights, we are talking about the idea that we can’t place any limits on gun ownership because (big assumption number one) it will lead to gun confiscation, which will lead to (big assumption number two) the end of liberty in America.

But maybe Americans do need to be reminded of the terror of a mass shooting. Beutler provided the following image from New York Daily News from the murder of television reporter Alison Parker. It isn’t graphic in the sense of showing blood and intestines. But I think it is quite graphic in the sense of showing the terror and pain caused by these shootings. Maybe such images would cause people who would normally stay at home to trudge down to the polling place and vote for reasonable gun control. It’s worth a try.

Image of Alison Parker’s murder used under Fair Use.

I was strangely concerned yesterday morning when I read that Kevin McCarthy had removed himself from consideration as Speaker of the House. It’s not like he would have been great, but he didn’t seem to be totally insane. And all we are really asking of the Republicans in the House is that they not destroy the world economy for the sake of making a “statement.” So who’s it gonna be now? Currently, we only know of Daniel Webster and Jason Chaffetz — two freaks. Is this what we have to look forward to?

The conventional wisdom — which I have generally followed along with — is that with power goes responsibility. Boehner acted the way he did because he — like all the Republicans — knows (or thinks) that blowing up the economy would be bad for them. Therefore, anyone in the job would be responsible. But that’s a questionable assumption, not a compelling conclusion. This really hit home to me when I heard Ben Carson interviewed on Marketplace. It was clear that Carson didn’t understand what the debt ceiling was all about. And I suspect that this is also true of many, if not most, of the Republicans in the House.

I’m starting to have these visions of Donald Trump in the White House with a General trying to explain to him that bombing Moscow would be a bad idea. Such a large part of the Republican Party has been completely cut off from the real world for such a long time. Their delusions now dictate their policies. And we’ve most definitely seen this with regard to the debt ceiling, where many Republicans have tried to make the case that breaching it would be no big deal. So what happens if such a person becomes Speaker of the House? Or are we going to get what the freaks always claim with a government shutdown: if only they just hung on another day, week, month that they would have “won”? It’s madness, but sadly all too possible.

According to Think Progress, Kevin McCarthy Suggests House Republicans Are Ungovernable, May Need To “Hit Rock Bottom.” It is hard to construe that in any way that isn’t terrifying. When drunks “hit rock bottom” they destroy their lives. The GOP hitting rock bottom could well destroy the world economy.

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog wrote a really angry, and I think accurate, article yesterday, First They Came for the GOP Moderates… It isn’t even directly about the crazies in the Republican Party; it’s about the likes of Colin Powell, Christie Todd Whitman, and William Weld. He noted, “The party in recent years has made its right-centrists… increasingly unwelcome. And they did nothing to fight back, except occasionally stamp an ineffectual foot…”

I’m angry too. The Republican Party didn’t just wake up this way one morning. And it isn’t just the Republican “moderates,” either. (It’s really kind of a joke. Whitman withheld clean syringes from drug users because facts don’t matter to her any more than they do Louie Gohmert.) It’s also the fault of the Democratic Party — most especially the New Democrats. And it is the fault of the American people for not caring enough to distinguish because a moderate party and proto-fascist radicals.

But perhaps McCarthy is right: sometimes you need to hit rock bottom. But that’s not a statement about the GOP, but the world. Maybe this is what it will take for us all to realize that we can’t allow any country to have the kind of power that the US has. All it takes is a handful of talk radio created lunatics and a disinterested electorate and the economy is destroyed. It’s truly amazing.

Is it already that time of year again? Another chance for the Republican Party to destroy the world economy with a debt ceiling standoff? Oh yes! Christmas comes but once a year, but the impending disaster of a US government default is something that pays benefits all the time. And we are but one month from another deadline when all reasonable Americans ask, “Are the Republicans really this reckless?!” The answer to that is: yes. They are like teens left along to monkey with the control room of a nuclear power plant. They don’t want anything to go terribly wrong, but they aren’t wise enough to know what they don’t know.

Back in 2003, the Republican Party raised the debt ceiling on the very same day that they passed a budget busting tax cut that did almost no good for the economy because it targeted the very rich. Imagine that: the Republican Party of 2003 was the careful one. If they manage to control Washington in 2017, I suspect we are looking at things that will make the Iraq War look like a wise and considered decision. I’m thinking: a war with Iran that devolves into a global nuclear war with Russia. I’ll bet Kevin McCarthy is fantasizing about it right now.

There was talk that Boehner might resolve this and various other issues before he stepped down as Speaker of the House. He did say, “I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn. I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there.” But we haven’t heard anything from him recently. And even if he does raise it, is will most likely be a temporary measure — the same kind of thing he did for the government shutdown. Let’s never fix anything! Let’s just push the confrontation ahead a month or two!

Michael Hiltzik has pointed out that the whole idea of the debt ceiling was originally created in 1917 to give the Treasury Department more latitude to deal with the federal budget — not less. It was created so that Congress didn’t have to vote on every little thing. “The debt limit became a fiscal pitfall only after 2010 when talk of holding it hostage for political ends became commonplace.” The only previous time there was anything like this was under Newt Gingrich in 1995. And think about that for a moment. I have lots of policies that I prefer. But the idea of risking default for the sake of winning a political battle should be seen as treasonous.

I know what people say: the Republicans wouldn’t really cause the country to default! But I see no reason to think otherwise. The truth is that it might well benefit them politically. It would send our economy into a tailspin and the American people, in their wisdom, might reward the malefactors with complete control of the federal government. Or it would destroy the Republican Party. I am convinced it is the uncertainty about that which stops the Republicans from doing it. Regardless, the debt ceiling issue will come back, because it never goes away. Not as long as the Republican Party exists in its current form — as a failed party.

On Tuesday at Vox, Ezra Klein wrote, Why Marco Rubio Is Insisting That His Massive Tax Cuts Will Pay for Themselves, Explained. Of course, you don’t need to read the article to know the answer. Anyone around here knows the claim: his tax cuts will unleash the economy and cause such an increase in tax revenues, that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. This is literally the idea of every major Republican politician since at least late 1980. This is especially funny considering that Rubio pushes this image of himself as the hip-hop loving young guy with the new ideas.

What’s really bothersome is that Rubio now has one of these fake think tanks that spit out “studies” that prove that conservative policy would be just awesome. In this case, it is the Tax Foundation, which Klein stated charitably, “It produces research, churns out charts and tables, and scores tax plans, but it’s motivated by an anti-tax agenda.” Not that it is any worse than the Cato Institute, but let’s be clear: it is an organization that will only ever produce ideologically appropriate studies. In other words, it isn’t in the truth business; it is in the dogma justification business.

So now Rubio can go on television and not worry. Anytime someone questions him about his ludicrous tax plan, he can say, “The Tax Foundation has scored my budget and finds that it will create surpluses. Also: ponies for all good boys and girls!” The Tax Foundation even describes itself as “nonpartisan.” That, of course, means nothing at all, other than that they don’t specifically align themselves with the Republican Party. Of the three people on their board of directors that I can find out information about, all are Republicans. Conservative hack Glenn Hubbard used to be on its board. It’s a conservative group with a very big ax to grind.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we have an actual free and independent press that took its job seriously. But instead, when we get a discussion of it at all, it will be of the typical form, “The Tax Policy Center says Rubio’s plan will create a huge budget deficit — just like all the previous similar plans have; but the Tax Foundation says it will create surpluses and ponies; who can say which is right?!” And it is this kind of reporting that allows Republicans to continue to claim that their tax cuts pay for themselves after decades of false promises to do so.

You have to give the Republican Party credit. They were the first to see that we live in a postmodern world. They saw that you could just lie and the press would frame at opinion. Global Warming isn’t a matter of science, but rather a matter of opinion. Is Planned Parenthood extracting viable fetuses from mothers and then extracting their brains while they are alive? It’s a matter of opinion! I’ve long thought that we get the government we deserve. But I’m beginning to think that’s wrong. We get a truly dysfunctional government because our news outlets have decided that their job is to entertain rather than inform. Marco Rubio is the creation of our media system.