I chose this mixed metaphor title for this article because it represents how that collective human endeavor known as culture really works. Culture is only what we individually perceive, and thus is less than real for each of us. Logic at its base is also flawed well enough. But when by our collective effort we mold society and culture, there is really no pretense about logic. It simply doesn't exist except as it is expressed through philosophically epithetic statements like, Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes, and What goes around, comes around.
These aphorisms remarkably enough are crude attempts at the goal of philosophy, categorical knowledge. But they fall far short of philosophy, and are instead generally negative comments about our collective nihilist view of the world.
I am not any great fan of philosophy expressed through aphorisms. Such attempts to philosophize are simply too easily misunderstood and mis-applied to hold any real durable value in a complex society where everyone has their own hidden agenda. Nietzsche was such an aphorist, and while reading Nietzsche can inspire worthy philosophical processes in the mind, his works also inspire misuse by those who have ulterior motives in mind. Aphorisms are all like this. And this is why they generally have earned my disapproval as a philosopher. There are no shortcuts in philosophy.
What is passed off as higher reason by journalists, historians and politicians is too often a fine mix of some well known and some lesser-known aphorisms, smeared with colloquial logic that imparts an Ah ha! from a crowd just before they turn into the mob that excretes culture. Such is the state of our culture that admires Picasso and JFK, an artist and a politician, neither of whom contributed much more than a comment about where the rapidly flowing river of culture has continued to go wrong. Both were rakes, and both were cheered in the coliseum in their day. But, so was Nero.
Yesterday I watched on PBS a rather interesting discussion about Guantanamo between Neal Katyal, of Georgetown University Law Center, and John Yoo, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, two remarkably learned, if equally remarkably brazen legal trollops. The discussion was moderated by one of the book-pressed flowers of PBS, Judy Woodruff.
It seemed clear both Katyal and Yoo were well immersed in the ointment of our culture along with all the other long dead and rotting flies. And Judy couldn't pluck them free of it either.
John Yoo apparently had something to do with the rationale behind using Guantanamo as a prison for enemy combatants, ostensibly because it provided a place free of U.S. laws, where these prisoners could be held incognito, tortured and tried under cloaked wraps by military tribunal.
Neal Katyal seemed to think the whole affair in Guantanamo was sordid and, failed to meet any standard of justice.
Perhaps Mr. Katyal should be made better aware of just how sordid and failure prone all justice is no matter where it is put up on display. I wondered rhetorically, while doubting Mr. Katyal had ever taken a judge before a commission on judicial conduct in an attempt to cleanse himself of the fetid stigma of his sordid profession.
As lawyers and professors of law neither was able to put their finger on the truth trigger, and, of course failing this, the enlightening gun of philosophy never misfired or went off in any direction. One could give these two legal analysts a full box of ammunition, put them inside the barn, and they couldn't hit either of the two broad sides of it.
There was a logical fly in the ointment of both their arguments, which is something I have grown to expect from the discussions made by those trained in the legal profession. Lawyering is no doubt the second profession invented by humankind.
During the courteous and all too self-effacing discussion it was pointed out, the U.S. Justice Department argues neither U.S. civilian law, nor, Cuban law applies on Guantanamo.
Guantanamo is leased by the U.S. from Cuba in some bizarre relationship neither country is fully content with but is nonetheless historically true. Such is history.
Here's the problem. If U.S. law does not apply, which is something with which I might wholly agree since this is Cuba. And if Cuban law does not apply, which is something that is so utterly disingenuous it can only be accepted by Americans who have been fed lies about Fidel Castro's government for a half century. Then generally what law does apply?
Professor Yoo would like us to believe the law of military tribunals applies. Yoo likes this because at least in part, he made it up. It accords well with farcical interpretations and ad hoc constructs given to what is transpiring there. It matters not to him that somehow the civilian U.S. Department of Justice offers up this lamely lied excuse. Should it not be offered up for the fraud it is by the Department of Defense, were it somehow logically or legally true? But this isn't the crux of the problem either.
The crux of the problem is in the ointment with all the other dead flies. All these liars seem to miss the point. If I swam to Guantanamo, and stole one of those lovely orange jump suits, what law would apply to me? I am a U.S. citizen. I have never been in the military. I am not an enemy combatant under any current or likely definition. I am on Cuban soil leased by the United States. So what law applies to my hypothetical theft of an orange jump suit for which I perhaps had a fashion statement desire I couldn't resist?
The Constitution protects U.S. citizens and residents in the U.S. from ex post facto laws, which are laws made after the fact. The whole body of U.S. law is so voluminous it would bury Guantanamo eighty feet deep in law books if it was necessary to have law books there to substantiate there are indeed separate laws in Guantanamo, if those laws are anything like U.S. laws. It is however argued the laws in Guantanamo aren't really U.S. laws. But I wonder, by what sovereign authority would laws in Guantanamo be made? Does the DOD have some sovereign authority there many thousands of miles away from any theater of war? Where in the Constitution is the President of the United States given the authority to make laws in an apparently quasi-sovereign Guantanamo?
All of this should remind everyone of the great favor former President Bill Clinton performed when he so eloquently elucidated upon exactly what all law really means.
"It depends on the meaning of what the word, "is," is," said Horny Bill much to our legally-cognitive benefit."
Philosophy is the pinnacle of all human knowledge not just for philosophers. And, the philosophic lesson here for even the non-philosopher is too obvious to posit.
The philosophic truth shining through here is in fact so obvious, there is no wonder our government is held in such disrepute that when we hear any government official or learned law professor speak, we know it is a falsehood. And, that's what passes for news on PBS.
We are not just misinformed and misled barbarians. We are idiot barbarians with weapons and an aptitude dangerous enough to destroy the world. We live in a world where liars are dangerous because the truth is so utterly servile to a vain culture.
Making up this crap as needed is the norm today. And it seems an increasingly common historical trend embellished by smooth-talking morons on a mission to no where and a penchant to see their ugly mugs on TV lying to the masses.
Let me explain for everyone here exactly what "just" means. When you divide a Hershey bar between two siblings, one gets to do the cutting, the other gets to do the choosing.
So choose. Is it U.S. law, or Cuban law that is in effect on Guantanamo?
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
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