Gripes

As I sit here, stuck in on a Friday night with a bad case of what can only be called the shits (gastrus dehlius), my thoughts turn naturally to the Problem of Evil.  There are two examples of, well, evil is a bit strong, but deep nastiness that I want to talk about this evening. 

The Problem of Evil, as you all know but I have to say just in case like, is the philosophical problem of reconciling the existence of evil with a world created and ruled by a good God.  Hume put it best with these three quietly devestating questions:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

There is a whole branch of sophisticated theology dedicated to coming up with a way of answering these questions in a way that both acknowledges evil, which we see around us in the form of wars, Sharon Matthews, sudden audits etc, and the less provable existence of a good God.  It is called Theodicy, and I assure you that the fact that this word sounds like an Anathem style mash up between theology and idiocy is purely co-incidental.  One of the more interesting arguments employed by Theodicy is that evil is required to serve the purpose of a supposed greater good.  For example, evil must exist to enable choice and free will.  (Let's just leave the argument about whether or not that's a greater good alone for the moment.)

All of which is a long winded, half a bottle of red wine when I'm not well, way of saying that I want to talk tonight about two things that are downright nasty but that serve a greater good.  The first is bankers not realising that their world is over, and the second is right wing fuck nuts on the internet.

Bankers first.  

"What are they, Strider?"

"They were once great kings of men.  But Sauron the Deciever gave to them nine Rings of Power. Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the Nazgûl: Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead."

There we have it. The great Kings of Wall St and the City, blinded by greed and fallen into darkness.  All they worked for is cast down.  And yet, they don't seem to have noticed.  The Wall St banks gave out $18 billion in bonuses this past year.  EIGHTEEN BILLION DOLLARS!  That's for the year in which they have destroyed the world financial system, broken most of the bulge bracket and left the rest on Government funded life support (how's that for socialised medicine) and caused untold misery among ordinary people who have now lost their jobs because some fuckwit in an expensive shirt made a horrid mistake.  Unless Bin Laden is paying for the bonuses, I'm not sure they deserve them.  In the UK, banks advertise and recruit and go about their business as if nothing has happened.  The only difference is that they actually do less of the only thing they do that helps, which is lend to businesses.  Other than that, they are cocooned in arrogance.  We have socialised loss and privatised profit and it makes me boil with rage. These monsters are bent to the will of the Adversary and are neither living nor dead.  They cannot live by standing alone and going about their business, yet they are too important to the economy to die and the government is too gutless to actually get it over with and nationalise them.  

The greater good here is the idea of the free market.  The market is flawed, yes, and it is not the answer to everything, but it remains the least worst system we've got.  Free markets don't throw up soviet style warehouses full of left shoes with no right ones to go with them.  They need to be strongly regulated, and yes the commanding heights probably should be state owned, but the general principle probably is a greater good.  Exhibits in favour: Google, Apple, Timothy Taylor Landlord, Lil Wayne records, the Ferrari 250 GT SWB

Aragon for PM, I say, and Gandalf for Chancellor.  Gollum for Archbishop of Canterbury.

Fucknuts second.

Greater good: free speech.  Necessary evil: conservapedia.  I have no doubt that something so one eyed and biased that claims to be even handed is actually evil. That is the hallmark of propaganda across the ages and I'm a Popper fan who believes in the open society.  However, I'm almost prepared to give this website a pass for services to comedy, because it so hilariously biased.  The article on Obama is a masterpiece that I urge you to read.  If you can't be bothered, here are some gems:

The first line of the article is: "Barack Hussein Obama II (allegedly born in Honolulu"  Gotta love that allegedly.  And the use of Hussein, though I have to say I got a thrill when I heard him use that name during the inauguration.  

It gets better: "To announce his trip to Berlin in July 2008, Obama used posters which show a marked similarity to posters of Lenin."

You get the idea.  There are pages about Obama being a Muslim (though as that limp wristed hippy Colin Powell observed, and I may be slightly paraphrasing, "he's not a Muslim, but if he was so what?") of which my favourite allegation is this, because its so hilariously paranoid: 

"(Obama) chose not to use the Bible for his real, private oath (of office)."

So we can laugh, ho ho, in our liberal old world enlightenment way, safe from head bangers who actually believe this shit.  My rage about this, and the reason I'm prepared to use the word evil is that in some Kansas town right now, perhaps a pretty town with barn dances and golden fields of corn like Smallville and a drugstore with cherry pie and a gum-snapping waitress who calls you 'honey', there are children being told that the President of the United States is a closet Muslim who wants to murder children.  This isn't a question of moral relativity - W really was an incompetent idiot who tortured innocent people -  and it makes me happy that the internet also has Tim Kreider and Glen Greenwald and Richard Dawkins.  If evil if a problem, then we have to try and solve it.  Doesn't mean we can, but we can try.

Right.  Got to dash.