And talking of stupid people and their stupidity, read the Story of Stupidity at whereelse but stupidity.com. To get a quick feel for the book, I would recommend you read the last chapter, the Age of Arrogance. For the record, I quote the epilogue of the book here.

The overwhelming conclusion of this work must be that people are human. This profound insight is based not only on the fact that we err but that we do so stupidly because our schemas define the way we perceive and interact with our environment while interfering with the way we learn about it and ourselves. At best, stupidity is a necessary evil since we do need guiding schemas to help us order our lives, even if these systems of thought come to shape and dominate our conscious world by structuring our perceptions, values and beliefs.

This review of the history of stupidity indicates that perhaps we overrated words as defining elements of schemas. For example, Galileo was entranced by neither the Italian nor Latin word for “Circle” but by the image of the circle as the perfect form. Thus, while words may shape our beliefs and thoughts to some extent, they may also be simply masking labels we attach to images and ideas we already hold. In a more general sense, language does not seem to dictate our behavior directly as much as it shapes it indirectly by the way we evaluate, think and talk about it.

More important, this work indicates how our sense of morality interacts with our propensity for learning. One of the human universals is a standard for judging what we do and what we learn. The specific standards vary, of course, from culture to culture, but every group and every individual has some subjective standard for making such judgments. In the absence of knowledge of absolute ultimates, Western culture uses its material success as the measure of all things. However, even in the context of materialism, it is time we recognize the long-term negative impact our technological self-centeredness imposes on the environment as we pursue our own short-term interests and goals. Likewise, we must recognize the nationalistic self-centeredness which inhibits our perception of ourselves as part of a global community.

If there is a sign of hope, it must be that the West permits people to question as well as to do. This combination makes our civilization potentially self-corrective, as it promotes learning and makes us at least theoretically capable of adapting not only to nature in general but to our own subjective nature as well. Further, it invites us to adapt our moral code to what we learn.

Ultimately, the intellectual/moral imperative is for less imposition and more balance. We should not be imposing ourselves on the world or our values on each other. Rather, we should be balancing our need for myths, quest for moral order and desire for material achievement with the necessity of learning history’s overwhelming lesson: We must live together. To fail to do so would be very stupid indeed.

By the way, if you think this a trite way to end this book, take another look at the subtitle on the cover.

The American fiasco in Iraq is a potent example of national stupidity.

I think it is important to remind ourselves that Bush’s best friend in the neighborhood is the Pakistani military dictator, General Musharraf, whom Bush is visiting to even things out between India and Pakistan. The dictator is a double-dealing bastard (pardon my French). Here is what Frédéric Grare, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has to say in the Foreign Policy portal titled Pakistan’s Double Dealing:

In the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan understood that terrorism had become, at least temporarily, unacceptable. It joined the war on terror and turned itself, once more, into a “frontline state.” In practice, however, Pakistan drew a distinction between militants active in Kashmir and international terrorists. The latter could be traded for international goodwill, but the former had to be preserved to keep leverage in Kashmir.

…

Pakistan will not change its position on Kashmir, so the United States must change its stance on Pakistan. When asked whether a paradigm shift on Kashmir is possible, Pakistani officials privately assert that nothing more than a cold peace can be expected. Given this environment, it is essential for Bush to understand that the Pakistani army is not the best protection against Islamic extremism but, rather, one of its causes. The fear of an Islamist takeover should stop distorting the administration’s dealings with Pakistan, and Bush should make clear to his host that regional terrorism is no more acceptable than the global variety.

Pakistan is at the hub of terrorism that Bush is claims to be fighting. Read this open letter from B Raman to President Bush. He begins with:

Dear Mr. President,

As you embark on your courageous visit to Pakistan, the adopted homeland of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mulla Mohammed Omar and other brutal killers of hundreds of your fellow-citizens, may I request you to spare a thought for your fellow-citizens and for the nationals of other countries, who continue to die at the hands of international jihadi terrorists given sanctuary in Pakistan?

There is a long laudry list of reasons for why Bush’s buddy is nasty character. Here is a snippet:

Mr. President, you remember the two attempts to kill your buddy in December 2003, at Rawalpindi? Well, the guilty in those incidents have already been got tried by Musharraf, their appeals against their conviction got disposed of and those sentenced to death sent to the gallows. For your buddy, the law did not pose any difficulty in sending them to death for trying to kill him.

10. The same law, according to your buddy, has been standing in the way of the killers of Daniel Pearl being sent to the gallows. Do you know how many times the hearing in the appeal against the conviction filed by Omar Sheikh has been got adjourned by the appellate court? Forty-one times—under some flimsy pretext or the other.

11. It was adjourned for the forty-first time right on the eve of your visit to Pakistan. On February 27, 2006, the Sindh High Court adjourned the hearing once again on the ground that Omar Sheikh has sacked his defence lawyer and that the killer must be given time to find and engage another lawyer.

Bush is being felicitated in India, as he should be as the head of the United States of America, the most powerful hegemonic state the world has ever seen. But there is the unfortunate fact that he is most likely guilty of criminal conspiracy back at home.

Lewis Lapham of Harper’s Magazine make The Case for Impeachment and why the US can no longer afford Bush. He starts off with the Conyers’ resolution:

On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form “a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.”

He concludes with

The Conyers report doesn’t lack for further instances of the administration’s misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years—misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as “enemy combatants,” etc.—but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President’s impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don’t know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

George W Bush is a criminal. That he has not been tried is not extraordinary. The most powerful criminals escape prosecution. Examples abound, both in India and around the world. Those that get caught and punished are the unsuccessful criminals. The really successful ones have their names immortalized as great heroes.

Postscript: I am a big fan of Garrison Keillor. Read why he thinks that Bush should be impeached in the International Herald Tribune.

I see this is going to be the trend. Mr Bush will make stupid incoherent statements and the Indian press will go ga-ga over how amazing his words are. Pundits will analyze his ramblings as if they were the pronouncements of an oracle.

Americans — the non-stupid variety, that is — are smarter than the average Indian journalist. They see Bush to be what he is: a moron. A fine specimen of the American species but a moron nonetheless. So while you prepare to be nauseated by the outpourings of the Indian journalists on Bush’s upcoming visit, here is a video of an American saying it more like it is. Enjoy and remember that Bush’s inability to reason and to even articulate a simple grammatically correct statement has not stood in the way of his becoming the most powerful man on earth, simply because the average American voter is like most Indian journalists a moron.

Before 9/11 gave him his big break – the neo-cons’ Pearl Harbor – Bush was written off as an amiable idiot, certain to serve only one term. An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive; and the thuggish ideologues who surround him are dangerous. 9/11 gave America a free gift of goodwill, and it poured in from all around the world. Bush took it as a free gift to the warmongers of his party, a licence to attack an irrelevant country which, however nasty its dictator, had no connection with 9/11. The consequence is that all the worldwide goodwill has vanished. Bush’s America is on the way to becoming a pariah state. And Bush’s Iraq has become a beacon for terrorists.

In the service of his long-planned war (with its catastrophically unplanned aftermath), Bush not only lied about Iraq being the “enemy” who had attacked the twin towers. With the connivance of the toadying Tony Blair and the spineless Colin Powell, he lied to Congress and the world about weapons of mass destruction. He is now brazenly lying to the American electorate about how “well” things are going under the puppet government. By comparison with this cynical mendacity, the worst that can be said about John Kerry is that he sometimes changes his mind. Well, wouldn’t you change your mind if you discovered that the major premise on which you had been persuaded to vote for war was a big fat lie?

I fully agree with Dawkins that Bush is a sly, mendacious, vindictive idiot. It is not a crime to be a SMVI. You would not choose to invite a SMVI over for dinner. As long as SMVIs do not bother you, you would leave them alone and go about your business. But it is a matter of grave concern when a SMVI is the President of the US, arguably the most influential man in the world. But can you blame the SMVI for being the president? Not really. He is just a SMVI. It is the collective idiocy of a sufficiently large number of ignorant gullible myopic retarded Americans that is responsible for elevating a SMVI to the highest office in the land. Bush is a consequence — a mere reflection — of the IGMR Americans who chose him over Al Gore.

It is important to remember that the leaders of a society are a reflection of the society, and it is more so when it is a representative democratic process which determines the leader. In the case of India, the blame for having an Italian woman as the head of the Indian government cannot be but placed on those IIGMR (illiterate ignorant gullible myopic retarded) Indians who voted for her. Bihar chooses TSMVIs with sickening regularity (thieving sly mendacious vindictive idiots) because Bihar’s electorate is over-represented by IIGMRs.

Come to think of it, ignorant gullible myopic retards are a universal phenomenon. In India, they have the additional qualification of being largely illiterate. Outside of India, they are literate but a large number of them are IGMR. For instance, take the Americans of Indian origin. The Economic Times (Mumbai) in their Oct 28th edition report that “outsourcing row tilts Indians towards Bush.” One worthy is quoted as saying, “With respect to John Kerry’s victory, I am concerned that his tax proposals to curb outsourcing will have a greater impact on Indian businesses, as well as Indian American business that have established off-shoring companies …”

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a perfect example of ignorance, gullibility, myopia, and retardedness. Allow me to elaborate. Bush has been arming Pakistan with billions of dollars worth of weapons. Pakistan is the epicenter of global terrorism and a significant portion of what it receives from the US, it uses against India in shocking acts of terrorism and in wars, both covert and otherwise. A vote for Bush by a person of Indian origin implies gross ignorance of what an additional four years of Bush presidency would do to India.

Kerry has expressed his deep concern about the loss of American jobs to global outsourcing. He is an American and he is rightly concerned that Americans are losing jobs. If he is elected president, he would do what is best for the US. Will he take protectionist measures? Don’t know. Maybe it is just election time posturing, maybe it is sincere. Believing that Kerry will shut down outsourcing (and thus cripple American businesses worldwide) is sheer gullibility.

Now for the myopic bit. India is a large country and a fairly large economy. If India is to become a developed economy, its domestic market has to increase. That is, its domestic production and consumption has to be sufficiently large to reflect its population (which in my opinion should really be a tenth of what it is.) If people believe that income from outsourcing will do anything other than make marginal differences, they are sadly mistaken. Worse than being mistaken, if energies are directed towards outsourcing activities, it could lead to neglect of other more vital sectors of the Indian economy which would ensure that India continues to be abjectly poor.

Bush has made the world a very dangerous place in the four years he had been in office. It is important to remember, however, that he has been on “best behavior” because he knew that he would run for re-election. If he wins this time around, he will not have to be on his best behavior for the next four years. Can you imagine what he would be like in the years to come when he can be on his “worst behavior”? Not being able to imagine that is being retarded. Those Indian Americans who would vote for Bush are therefore IGMR. QED.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!