The Bush Administration: Worse than You Can Imagine Even Though You Know It Is Worse than You Can Imagine

Via Sadly, No! Stew Magnuson reports on psychopaths who "have the ear" of Undersecretary Jay Cohen:

Security Beat: Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation. The group has the ear of Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Jay Cohen, head of the science and technology directorate, who has said he likes their unconventional thinking.... Among the group’s approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as “Ringworld” and “Lucifer’s Hammer.”...

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.

“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied.

“I cannot guarantee I’m going to be a great help to Homeland Security,” Niven said earlier....

The 45-minute panel discussion quickly deteriorated as federal, local and state homeland security officials, and at least one congressional aid, attempted to ask questions, which were largely ignored...

The Bush administration: worse than you can imagine even though you know it is worse than you can imagine.

Comments

[Matthew Austern]

The sad thing is that 30 or 40 years ago Niven was an important and imaginative writer. He once wrote stories that were worth reading. This sort of thing is just pathetic.

[jerry]

Sadly, there's nothing terribly new about this. Pournelle claims to be a member of a group of science fiction authors that proposed Star Wars to Teller and got him to get Reagan to agree to that.

[bakho]

The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle

Great read about a first encounter with a new species. They seem harmless enough but the Moties go through population boom cycles that deplete resources and lead to crippling warfare that causes population and civilization to collapse to the stone age and they have to start all over again. They cannot be allowed to escape their plight and pollute the universe with their uncontrollable population cycles.

I can see why the head of HS would want to hang out with these guys. Bush government philosophy is that the government can do no good (unless it's the military). Since DHS is not going to do anything anyway, they might as well hang out with cool writers.

[ed]

"Sadly, there's nothing terribly new about this. Pournelle claims to be a member of a group of science fiction authors that proposed Star Wars to Teller and got him to get Reagan to agree to that."

I really really really wish I could have been in the room when someone sold Dutch invisible planes. Mercy. Whoa.

[foolishmortal]

The scary thing is that the cheapest way to effectively start this rumor is to actually start killing the uninsured and harvesting their organs.

[Roger Bigod]

We could have ice cream trucks with the hospital logo go around immigrant neighborhoods selling "Soylent Verde". But that's so 70's. It's more 2.0 to plant the idea in a hot game or pay some kool kidz to promote it on social networks.

I do not think "pro bono" means what they think it means.

[piotr]

I guess it is mostly harmless. On the other hand, it illustrates a more general problem.

As one either knows or may guess, SF community is very diverse, with authors projecting assorted opinions "into the future". Level of intelligence, common sense, and political views vary wildly. However, this is such an awful Administration that no reasonable person would join any advisory panels.

And if someone reasonable, in a momentary fitness of unreason, join such a panel, he or she would be ignored anyway.

By the way, Poindexter's idea of making an anonymous market in terror futures was lifted from SF, and in general, the spirit of cheap genre fiction is palpable in this Administration.

[Kate G]

I sure hope they are asking Orson Scott Card for his novel, sci fi ideas about gays. That should go over very well.

Kate G.

[Matt]

"even though you know it is worse than you can imagine."

There is an uncertainty limit on worseness, and the Republicans have broken the barrier!

[christofay]

Obviously these are not the guys with the Ivy League degrees. Harvard UAE rocks.

It sounds like they had a meeting. They worked hard. And they still have time for a prayer meeting.

[Cranky Observer]

> The scary thing is that the cheapest way to
> effectively start this rumor is to actually
> start killing the uninsured and harvesting their organs.

The sad thing about that was that back in the 60s/70s Niven was so often right in his wildest speculations; he predicted that the perfection of transplant technology would lead to governments executing/harvesting people for minor crimes. Which appears to be happening in the PRC today.

But yeah, he and Pournelle went off the rails a while ago. Oddly many of Pournelle's immediate responses to 9/11 and the Radical Right's overreaction where reasonable, but then he went down the "throw a crappy country against the wall" path and never came back.

Cranky

[mwg]

As somebody else pointed out on some other blog I've unfortunately forgotten, this is a brilliant idea! Because what we really want is for illegal immigrants to leave their communicable diseases untreated, so they're more likely to spread among communities of illegal immigrants. Oh, and everybody else, too.

Has Niven written anything worthwhile since Ringworld? I made it through Ringworld Throne a few years ago, but it was a mess.

[Matt Austern]

Niven did write things worth reading after Ringworld (published 1970), yes, but if you look at his bibliography you'll see that the quantity of his solo works dropped off dramatically about 30 years ago, and if you're familiar with most of those works you'll see that the quality did too. Looking through an online bibliography I can see one story I admire that was published as late as 1980, "The Green Marauder", but at that late date it looks pretty lonely.

One thing to remember is that Niven shouldn't be judged on his novels. When he was in his prime a lot of the creative energy in science fiction was in short stories (the SF short story market was in much better shape back then), and Niven was one of the many writers of that era whose best short stories were much better than his novels. Almost all of his best stories, the ones that made his reputation, are from 1965 through about 1978.

Niven isn't the only writer who became a crank decades after publishing his important work, and he's by no means the best or most famous writer to do that, but it's still sad whenever it happens.

[JonF]

"Lucifer's Hammer" was an interesting read about a comet striking the earth. It came out a year or so before the Alvarez hypothesis cocnerning the extinction of the dinosuars by such an impact, so it was a case of fiction anticipaing real science. Unfortunately the latter half of the book departed from the realm of credibility as it envisioned mobs of Black power radicals, nutty environmentalists and fundamentalist Christians banding together in order to attack the one surviving remnant of civilization and technology in California-- three groups you'd have trouble getting to agree on the time of day, let alone join in a "Back to The Stone Age" Crusade.

[Valuethinker]

JonF

Better yet, these nutsos were "cannibals" and they were attacking a *nuclear power station*.

As with Inferno, and later Footfall (where one of the villains is an eco journalist who nearly sells out the US to the aliens-- shades of Tom Clancy) Niven & Pournelle used Lucifer's H to 'get' all of their true enemies: anti nukes, leftists etc. See also 'Oath of Fealty' where leftist terrorists try to blow up a condominium Arcology (after raping the heroine)-- I kid not.

Niven wrote great short SF in the 60s, but most of his stuff since has been very disappointing-- just about anything after Ringworld. I loved some of Pournelle's military sci fi, but I think, by and large, that Drake does that sort of thing better (and Drake is a classicist by profession, so the Roman/Greek analogies ring truer).

But ideologically Niven and Pournelle are objectionable.