Boumediene v Bush

The Boumediene v. Bush decision has been denounced for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most viscerally through maintaining, as Justice Scalia put it, “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” I understand that for a variety of practical and political reasons, and because of the utter irrationality of the electorate on matters of life and death as well as its mathematical/statistical ineptitude (ala the lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand statistics), no-one in a position of public responsibility can afford to become Vice President Cheney’s alter ego on this matter, thus I have decided to speak the unspeakable: “So?”

Americans currently die at a rate of somewhere in the neigborhood of 3 million per year and among those are a whole range of preventable causes: traffic related deaths ~50,000; gun-related homicides ~20,000; smoking related deaths ~500,000; alcohol related deaths (though, admittedly, it would seem to a casual observer that this category has significant overlap with the preceding categories) ~ 250,000; obesity; medical errors; industrial accidents; and on and on. The terrible events of September 11, 2001 – knock on wood, to date, the ne plus ultra of terrorist acts - caused around 3,000 deaths. Our military response to it has cost well over 4,000 deaths of American soldiers and a toll so staggering to Iraqis that some Panglossian supporters of the Iraq policy stake out their position with sunny low end estimates of “only” 100,000.

Now, lets briefly consider that extraordinarily straightforward policies could immediately be implemented that would save many times the number of lives lost in the terrorist incidents on September 11, 2001: for instance, impose a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour. The statistics on this are unequivocal, unassailable. But, of course, that would be considered an utterly absurd proposition. What is it about our out-of-whack psyches that makes those thousands of bloody, violent and needless traffic deaths and the many more crippling injuries something less than terrorizing? I’m serious: really, what is it?

My point, if somehow you’ve missed it, is this: yes, perhaps – perhaps - some Americans will die because of Boumediene v. Bush, but we always accept tradeoffs between safety and other considerations, like getting to Wal-Mart five minutes sooner. Notwithstanding the intractable corner into which the Bush administration insisted on painting the country in its determination to go to the dark side in its treatment of prisoners in the Global War on Terror and that ultimately led to this Supreme Court decision, and notwithstanding the hypocrisy of neoconservatives expounding on the the hale and brave character and willingness to sacrifice of the American public while simultaneously advocating for cowardly anti-democratic policies that, in the end, cannot assure their fetishized absolute “safety” from the carefully cirumscribed forms of terrorism that involve melanin bearing perpetrators, doesn’t preserving one of the most fundamental rights in the historical development of the rule of law warrant some tradeoffs? Come on Americans – lets reach down deep and show a little of that “home of the brave” for a change. Just a little.

Coping With High Gas Prices

So, NPR , you want to know how I’m coping with high gasoline prices. When there was a frenzy to buy into the suburban fantasy of the country micro-estate that coincidentally requires commuters to drive 25 or 50 or sometimes, insanely, 200 miles a day, I quietly declined and settled for a house that was less “perfect” but that is very convenient to my workplace and shopping. When so many of those in my community seemed to be Hummering-up in some sort of ritual of purification by gasoline consumption, I made an effort to get in the habit of walking or bicycling for as many of my errands and trips as possible. When I understood the enormity of our trade and federal budget deficits and the economic risks inherent in those, I wrote to my representatives and legislators asking them to address the issues (clearly, the least effective of my coping strategies). When RV’s and four-wheelers and snowmobiles and speed-boats were all the rage, I cultivated interests and recreational activities that didn’t require the combustion of fossil fuels. I taught myself to be satisfied with the slightly unkempt look of a lawn after it is cut with a push mower and I thought of the chore of lawnmowing as part of my exercise regimen. When I needed a new car, I made sure the one I selected had at least reasonable fuel efficiency. I steadfastly supported and voted in favor of public transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in my community and region. My coping was over years ago.

As much as it sounds as though I am gloating, in fact I am not and, indeed, I am by turns, dispirited, more than a little scared, and contrite. I understand that our fates -mine and the Hummer driver's- are entwined and, you see, it was obvious to me many years ago that the day of reckoning with our oil consumption was coming very quickly. I think we are in for a long and perhaps very painful readjustment to this new reality and that we have been terribly betrayed - betrayed by the selfish indifference of our policy makers, captains of industry and agriculture, national leaders, media, including you, NPR , and, finally, by people like me who were troubled by what they saw but just not quite sure enough of themselves to genuinely sound the alarm. That betrayal lost us the opportunity to really do something about the situation - to do something when there was time and it might have softened the blow. And I have no illusions but that now we will all of us pay a very dear price for our gluttony and our silence.