America the broken

This article on the bail bond industry in America is incredible. An entire system has been created in which no one benefits but the bondsmen and the county officials they help elect. Read it. Incredible.

No, scratch that. Incredible is the wrong word. Incredible means not credible, which means unbelievable.

This situation is sadly, quite believable. But in a country that prides itself on being a paragon of democracy and efficiency, and a shining beacon to the rest of the world, it's ridiculous how absolutely nothing works as it "should". Not even something simple like posting bail.

I think it's safe to say that most Americans have an idealized conception of how things in their country are supposed to work. This isn't a liberal vs. conservative thing in most cases. There is a general national consensus on how certain institutions are "supposed" to work. You know what I mean. The description of things you would learn in civics class, if you had taken an American civics class. It is reinforced in and by movies, television and cartoons.

I think it's also safe to say that practically nothing in The Greatest Country On Earth™ works as it should.

I'll repeat that, for emphasis: In America, practically nothing works as it should.

A straightforward, plain English explanation of almost any aspect of american public life or society is enough to shock.

I'm only basing this on anecdotes of particular industries and institutions, but I do believe that the plural of "anecdote" can in fact be "data", or at least I think its true in this case. I'm prepared to defend my pet thesis.

To anyone reading this, have you got an idea in mind of an American institution or industry which you believe goes against this and actually does work as it should, more or less? If so, please post it in the comments. Feel free to include what you believe to be a description of how it "should" work. I will investigate, and write something about it.

Examples of topics: Food production, credit cards, Congress, public schools, the military, health insurance, prisons.

All of the examples I've picked differ greatly in practice from how they "ought" to work. Your job is to find a topic that doesn't.

*Note that in principle that it's possible for something to differ from how it "should" be because it has become more modern and effective. This is possible, but as often as not modern innovations not only shift something from its traditional methods, but they make it more inefficient at the same time. Private military contractors would be one example.

** If the widely held perception of something is that it already is crappy, don't bother listing that as an example. eg. Mcdonald's clerk. The public's perception of that job is probably largely correct, but I don't think that's much to brag about.

edit: It just occurs to me that by posting this, I'm running the risk of getting submissions to the effect of:

"Yoga class. You pay money, go to a class and do yoga. Works like it should."

I guess that's a risk I'll have to take.

59 Senate Seats

That's how many the Democrats have, now that the Republicans seem to have won Ed Kennedy's seat.

The fact that they did lose, makes you wonder: Are the Democrats the suckiest party that ever did suck?

If that isn't true, then it shouldn't be too difficult for them to realize that even with only 59 seats in the Senate, that's far more than Bush ever had when he was doing lots of bad things.

But oh no, woe is the Democrats, those meenie weenie Republicans will threaten to talk at them a lot (filibuster) if they try and do anything that might be popular. So, it seems like a smarter idea not to do anything, or at least to propose really tiny changes that won't offend anybody.

The thinking goes, this might make them less likely to lost their seats in the general election this year. People will vote for the Democrats, as long as they don't propose changing anything, because people like how things are right now, right?

We'll see how that works. Or maybe they'll figure out that to actually stay in power, they have to do a bit more than give money to corporations and then whine about Republicans when people complain about how they aren't doing anything to help them.

I suspect they like power, most people do. They'll have to produce something at least marginally useful if they want The Historic Nobel Laureate Mr. Obama to last more than one lousy term.

I'm not optimistic they're smart enough to act in their own self interest. But, maybe they'll prove me wrong. The approach they take over the next little while, as this loss sinks in, will be a good indicator.

Oops. re:Iran

So, a couple of posts down I said that the West would go nuts if Iran threatened to attack its soldiers in Iraq, or elsewhere. Well, I was totally wrong. Iran has apparently announced that they will attack western warships in the Persian Gulf if attacked. No one is making anything of this.

So, um....don't listen to anything I say. I guess the lesson here is that no one's really paying attention to Iran right now, so neither sides announcements really get seized upon.

Yemen? How did we get here?

I think something is broken. Ever since a Nigerian set his underpants alight aboard an international aeroplane, there have been mutterings of war with Yemen, or war in Yemen, or bombing Yemen with the support of their government. Stuff along those lines.

I heard on the news today that an envoy from Yemen was in Ottawa, asking for military aid against Al-Qaeda. More likely, they will use it for domestic purposes, including fighting their non-al Qaeda rebellions.

I could write you a whole post on why this is likely to be a bad, counterproductive policy, on how the Yemeni government will likely manipulate the west for its own purposes, produce kills of alleged high value targets, and cite Al-Qaeda as a bugbear to extract money, weapons and training. And that would be the less scary story.

The scarier one involves our involvement creating an anti-western backlash, and the propaganda related to that pushing the US into yet another quagmire of a war.

But that's not what I want to write about. Why are we even having this discussion in the first place? This is happening without much of a fuss, with a fairly minor event serving as the trigger.

It's just sort of assumed that it's natural and normal to send drones to bomb Yemen, send them some military advisors, and, if it comes to it, I'm sure the main impediment to sending ground troops would be that the US army is already stretched thin. There likely wouldn't be many moral objections voiced in the mainstream press, or worry that the American people might not support the deployment of troops abroad.

How did we get here? It used to be much harder to start a war.

I think the campaign to invade Iraq changed America. And us, as we're so exposed to their media, and the words of their presidents and government officials. I remember prior to the invasion, people talked about the Somalia syndrome. The minimal US casualties in that country had caused a public outcry, and scared politicians away from any troop deployment which could lead to the loss of American lives.

That has now been entirely overcome. No one talks about that anymore. The US losses in Mogadishu now seem trivial.

Something happened. I'm not sure if it was 9/11, the propaganda campaign, the steady normalization to losses suffered in the Iraq and Afghan wars*, the slow drumbeat of militarization throughout the Bush presidency. Abu Ghraib played a large part as well. They led to desensitization, and eventually resensitization, to the idea that torture was a good idea. The fact that no one of any importance was punished played a great role in allowing this.

I don't think there is any single cause. But we're in a new normal. Obama is continuing most of Bush's policies, in a less bellicose manner. People seem to think this constitutes change. These policies don't seem strange to people any more.

Predator drone attacks absent declarations of war, blase violation of sovereignty, secret prisons, torture, full body scanners in airports, the increased and continued use of paramilitary contractors, escalation of a war, highly secretive legal tactics, claims of executive and national security privilege. There's more, but I can't even remember it all.

This is now largely taken for granted, if its mentioned at all. I have a rough idea of how we got here over the past nine years (has it really been that long?), but it's hard to remember what things were like before, what people thought, how the norms have changed.

A decade ago, those things I listed would have been much more scandalous. Unamerican, even. Some of them might have been done, but they weren't taken for granted as they are now. If you're reading this, and you consider any of the things I listed as not all that shocking, why? Did you always think that way? If not, what changed?

I don't consider them shocking anymore, they're standard operating procedure now. But at one time, I would have considered them extreme, and so would most people.

Why aren't we shocked anymore? And can we go back to being shocked? I think it may be too late. By continuing Bush's policies but in a more respectable tone, Obama is locking these things in as the new "normal".

Right now, I don't know very much about Yemen. I'm hoping I won't have to learn more, by reading dispatches from the Yemeni front in the near distant future.

* This has affected Canada as well. We've lost 139 soldiers in that country. America lost but 18 in Somalia. People care, but they now consider it acceptable. This would not have been true a decade ago. That this is so I believe is due in large part to events and words spoken south of the border.

All options are on the table

David Petraeus, head of US military operations in the Middle East, has announced that America has drawn up plans for attacking Iran, if they decide it's necessary.

The fact that they have such plans is no great revelation. I would have been surprised if they didn't. I am a little shocked they decided to talk about it in such a blasé manner, though only a little. It was treated as minor news here.

Imagine the furor if the situation was reversed. ie. "Iran announces plan to attack US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilize proxy forces if US bombs nuclear sites".

I am pretty sure Iran must have plans to this effect. If they announced that however, you'd hear no end of how belligerent and murderous they were, for planning to kill American soldiers.

However, if an American says the same thing, nothing is made of it. I heard this on French news. The only print references I can find on Google are in newspapers from India and Pakistan (and CNN, where this was originally announced). That a high ranking american general announced plans exist to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, breaching international law and killing civilians is of no interest, apparently on this continent.