Incompetence

I know how it would be possible to destroy any country on earth without ever firing a shot. Indeed, you could bring any culture to an absolute standstill with virtually no effort at all. Pass a law that would allow people to bring charges or sue for incompetence. That's all it would take. As it is, as far as I know, there is no penalty for incompetence (certainly not in the United States). Well, I guess you might get fired for it, as in the case of Michael Brown, but you have to admit that is very unusual. Even though virtually every government official involved in the Katrina catastrophe was shown to be incompetent nothing happened to them. They still have their jobs. And of course there are George W. Bush and Dick the Slimy Cheney, both incompetent beyond belief, but still not up to the level of incompetence of our Secretary of Defense. "I'm not aware of a civil war, he says, are you?" turning in feigned innocence to General Pace standing next to him. This is the same General Pace who earlier said he believed things were going well in Iraq (and the same General Pace whose career is dependent upon the favor of Rumsfeld the Incompetent).

But I'm not speaking just of high level incompetence. I mean to go after incompetence wherever found. Like the shoe clerk, for example, who knows nothing about shoes. The plumber who floods your basement. The electrician who burns down your house. The auto mechanic who uses the wrong spark plugs. Even worse, the surgeon who amputates the wrong limb. These things happen every day in the United States. Apparently they happen so frequently in hospitals you might well be better off to avoid hospitals. Then there are the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of bureacrats, that are basically defined by their incompetence. You know, the kind that say "I can't sign that until so-and-so has signed it," when so-and-so has already refused to sign it because they haven't signed it. The ones that punish little kids for bringing half inch toy plastic guns to school, or little old ladies who bring knitting needles on airplances or refuse to take off their shoes.

Just think, if there were laws against incompetence, and you could file charges against incompetence, the whole world would quickly stop if not come to an end. That is precisely why there are no such laws. Think about it. And this is not merely an American problem. It is a universal problem that exists in all cultures at all times. There is never a dearth of incompetence. Never. Not anywhere. Human incompetence is so widespread, so fundamental, so basic to our nature, that it makes completely clear how there could not possibly be such a thing as "Intelligent Design." But at the same time it also strongly implies that "Survival of the Fittest" is equally implausable. Now there is a philosophical problem that should keep you busy until something happens in American politics that makes any sense whatsoever.

In case you haven't been listening, President Brain-dead insists we are making "progress" in Iraq and we are going to achieve "victory."