Some Mad Thoughts

Of course I refer to the old Cold War usage of MAD, that being mutually assured destruction.
Of late, the notion of another civil war in the US is much in the news, the polls, and this little sphere of blogs.  I have to say it reminds me of this little exchange from Dr. Strangelove.  If you've never seen this movie, it would be profitable to remedy that deprivation.




Muffley: What... what is it, what?


DeSadeski: The fools... the mad fools.

Muffley: What's happened?

DeSadeski: The doomsday machine.

Muffley: The doomsday machine? What is that?

DeSadeski: A device which will destroy all human and animal life on earth.

Muffley: All human and animal life? ... I'm afraid I don't understand something, Alexiy. Is the Premier threatening to explode this if our planes carry out their attack?

DeSadeski: No sir. It is not a thing a sane man would do. The doomsday machine is designed to to trigger itself automatically.

Muffley: But surely you can disarm it somehow.

DeSadeski: No. It is designed to explode if any attempt is ever made to untrigger it.

Muffley: Automatically? ... But, how is it possible for this thing to be triggered automatically, and at the same time impossible to untrigger?

Strangelove: Mr. President, it is not only possible, it is essential. That is the whole idea of this machine, you know. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the fear to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making process which rules out human meddling, the doomsday machine is terrifying. It's simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing.

Turgidson: Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines, Stainsy.

Muffley: But this is fantastic, Strangelove. How can it be triggered automatically?

Strangelove: Well, it's remarkably simple to do that. When you merely wish to bury bombs, there is no limit to the size. After that they are connected to a gigantic complex of computers. Now then, a specific and clearly defined set of circumstances, under which the bombs are to be exploded, is programmed into a tape memory bank. ... Yes, but the... whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?

DeSadeski: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

  Kubrick gives a pretty good discussion of strategic deterrence here.  His discussion is quite relevant for the circumstances the US has found itself in.  You see, nearly any prospective parties to a 3rd American Revolution are in a MAD scenario, but in general they just don't recognize it.  Let's start with the most obvious and work our way down.    First, the US still has tons of nuclear weapons.  More than enough to produce MAD effects.  Not only that, they're a lot less constrained by codes and safeguards than most of us would like to believe.  You see, one of the things that analysts really worried a lot about back in the Cold War days was that the adversary would interfere with the delivery of same from the President.  Accordingly, a lot of the US arsenal, and probably most other nation's arsenals as well, don't require codes to detonate properly in a ground burst (i.e., on impact).  Ground bursts aren't as efficient at killing in the immediate term, but they generate tons more fallout and lasting devastation.  That design decision strongly deters the adversary from any attempt to 'intercept the football'.  Would one or both sides go nuclear?  If they perceived the threat to them was existential, I bet they would in a heartbeat.   Second, our infrastructure is much, much more vulnerable than it was back during the Cold War, especially our power grid and transportation system.  Lots of it is falling apart right before our eyes without any active enemy action at all.  Worse, we've gone way backwards in terms of civil defense, stockpiles, and ability to locally manufacture replacements for the most likely targets.  Not only that, we've got much lower social cohesion making the US government even worse at triage than it would have been back in the day.  Two percent is probably an overestimate of the fraction of the population that would be required to trigger MAD this way---hell, the Mormons could probably do it with ease.   The survival of 80-90% of our population is absolutely dependent on the maintenance of our infrastructure, especially our power grid.  My gut tells me all of the prospective sides of this conflict which looks increasingly inevitable grossly underestimate the ramifications of same.  My advice to readers is consider carefully your plans B and C.  I've no illusions that I might cause an outbreak of sanity.  Neither the Cathedral nor its opponents are likely to go gently into the night.  More likely they'll channel 'The Wrath of Khan'.

The Most Dangerous Game in Public Schools

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/04/gunfire_and_moments_of_fear_as.html

Back when I was a student, this little exercise would have been insanely risky.  Now it's just outrageously so.
It is VERY hard to predict what people are going to do when they unexpectedly come under fire.  Back in the 80s, there were still a lot of male teachers, and lots of those teachers were, well, reasonably masculine, and a lot of them had 'seen the elephant' in Vietnam and other foreign adventures.  A fair number of them actually gave a damn about their charges too.  I could EASILY see my old calculus or physics instructor entering the berzerkergang, and possibly dragging a fair number of his students into that state along with him.  Then what are your headlines?
Sometimes I swear that it seems like I've got a powerful and capable counterintelligence network getting the public school system to score enough 'own goals' to keep my side in the game.

More On The Philosophy Of The Three

Referring, of course, to that philosophy articulated by my three year old...
One of his favorite games at this age is to pretend he is something, like a bird or a snake, and tell the adults what he 'is'.  I often play along with him and suggest some of the logical implications of his choice of 'form'---like, you should look out, our cat is going to chase you if you're a bird or a snake.  To which he replies...I'm just a Pretend Bird, she only chases Real Birds.
It's funny sometimes how he winds up expressing ridiculously common behaviors among adults of the Cathedral without any added varnish.  You see, our country is CHOCK FULL of 'pretend' environmentalists, 'anti-racists', and 'moral universalists'.  The difference is they lack the self-awareness of my three year old.

It Is A Pity That Nobody Expects the Holy Inquisition

http://www.catholic.com/blog/karl-keating/nobody-expects-the-modern-inquisition

89 total members, most of whom are probably not solely dedicated to the task at hand, a task so large as to defy Imagination!
My Lord, as a Protestant---a Quaker for heaven's sake---I find this appalling.  Far more resources need to be applied to the suppression of heresy within the Catholic church.  As a bonus, when you dig up heretics, you're likely to find a bunch of other miscreants in the same holes, like child molesters, embezzlers, and the like.  Lots of people are good for nothing, but almost nobody is BAD for nothing.

Does the Inquisition accept direct donations?  Could reactionaries endow, say, a few holy techies and dbas, and the like to make the perceived massive intelligence network and all seeing Eye of the Inquisition closer to a reality?  Or at least something we could believe exists and take comfort in rather than something that exists only in the fevered dreams of the far Left?

A Somewhat Surprising But Encouraging Development

I've talked before about the profound differences between the way the neurotypical and the most common non-neurotypical 'diplomatic models' work.  In short, the neurotypical likes you more the more favors he does for you.  The non-neurotypical likes you better the more favors you do for him.  Those who want to be somewhat deprecating would say that the non-neurotypical is selfish and the neurotypical in ungrateful.

But I'm not in the mood to deprecate anyone today.  Today let's consider how you, as a charity, might solicit contributions for a worthy cause from both of these populations.  The neurotypical, protest as he might, generally likes it when you 'over-communicate', and send him lots of solicitations.  The more often he writes you a check, the more likely he is to write you more of them in the future.  It's quite funny really watching neurotypicals CLAIM that they have a non-neurotypical diplomatic model but then demonstrate through their actions time and time again that their model is in fact bog standard.  Ever wonder why the typical modes of sales and solicitation are as they are?  It's because they work really well on this 95% of the population.

But let's say you want to solicit the non-neurotypical.  The more often you have to trouble them for a favor, the less they'll come to like you.  The dead giveaway is when you as the charity are getting autopay checks on a monthly or quarterly basis.  The more neurotypical a person is, the more they're likely to enjoy the act of writing you a check and mailing it to you, or better yet, giving it to you in person---assuming of course that they value your organization and its work.  The non-neurotypical is precisely the opposite.  To stay the sort of 'cheerful giver' that God loves, they pretty much have to automate it, and automate it they do.

Now the encouraging development is this---I was recently called by one of the charities my wife and I regularly support.  But the instant they recognized that we auto-pay them every month (they called on my name and we autopay with my wife's name), they immediately apologized for bothering us and thanked us for our support.  This tells me that at least some charities get it, and have developed a model that has at least adequate resolution on this topic.

Sometimes I'm Convinced I Have a Vast And Effective Counterintelligence Network

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/02/high-school-student-disarms-gunman-gets-suspended/

A network dedicated to my goal of the separation of School and State, unless, of course, counter-revolutionaries like myself control the state.  This incident is pretty seriously over the top, and exactly the kind of outrage I'd have my CI assets perform, if I had any such assets, which to the best of my knowledge, I do not.  There have been a bunch of similar gun-related outrages at schools lately.  Increasing the anger of the population is good.  Promoting more homeschooling is even better.  Forward the counter-revolution.

Perhaps The Outgoing Pope Did More To Clean Up The Catholic Church Than We Realized

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=7089

Not being intimately familiar with the actual, as opposed to theoretical Catholic hierarchy, I'm not certain how big a deal removing 2-3 bishops a month is by modern standards, but I wager it represents a good fraction of the Pope's energies over an extended period of time.  I think most of us are going to miss Benedict when he resigns this week.