We here in the reality-based community often talk about how out-of-touch are the...people on the other side of the aisle, but it's difficult to grasp the depth of their obtuseness without once in a while donning the hazmat gear and trekking over to the conservative end of the blogosphere.  Today, your resident historiorantologist took a Grand Tour of Dead-Ender haunts, through Malkin Gulch (she has the vapors about Winnie the Pooh or something), Freeperville (check out the comments in Woman beats 7-foot-3 sex offender with baseball bat if you really want to know what we're up against), and, of course, that plucky little wannabe DKos, RedState.com.

It was while I was reading the titles on the RedState rec list that my heart soared momentarily, for one "blog" was labeled George W. Bush's Resignation Speech.  It's a RedStater's fantasy version of what such a document might look like, and it's a hoot - join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, to see just how twisted the wingnut bizarro-world has actually become.

A couple of weeks ago, your resident historiorantologist posited the idea that, in spite of where knee-jerk definitions might lead us, the three clowns who have occupied the Office of the Attorney General during the Bush "administration" are, in fact, products of Enlightened (or, at the very least, Enlightenment) thinking.  At first blush, this seems impossible – these are, after all, neocon mouth-breathers who think habeus corpus translates to "have corpses" – but as I hopefully showed in Enlightened Justice, the tendency to conflate jurisprudence and violence in the 16th-18th centuries pretty clearly indicates that the Torture Trio would be quite at home in the post-Magna Carta, pre-Cesare Becarria world.

Those centuries are, of course, the very ones that saw the dawning Industrial Age enter daily life in a big way, and it was inevitable that crime and punishment would be one of the battlegrounds between philosophy and "progress."  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll have a look at Early Modern responses to calls for humane executions and (ultimately futile) attempts to hold back the trend toward mechanical dehumanization.

Now with Executive Summary!

Last night, I began telling the saga of the breakup of the Mapleton School District (Thornton, Colorado), and how Barack Obama's recent celebration at its flagship "small school" highlights his profoundly erroneous stances vis-à-vis school reform and restructuring.  

Tonight, in Part II, I'll look at the devastating effects of the sundering of Mapleton on the people who had dedicated their lives and careers in service to the community's youth.  I'll also examine some of the money issues involved, which might go a long way toward explaining why hucksters like Neil Bush and political animals like Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts Director Michael Johnston have been able to amass fortunes and hoodwink voters into supporting poorly thought-out and badly managed "reform" programs, all the while moaning the mantra, "It's what's best for kids."

I had hoped my first candidate diary would be one of those ones that simply lavish praise upon a presidential hopeful – maybe a nice "Thank You, Barack, for Today's Beautiful Sunrise" – but alas, it wasn't to be.  This is partly my fault (I could've written one earlier in the primary season) but it's also Barack Obama's, for his astonishingly poor choice of venue in giving an address on education on Wednesday, May 28.

Even as I write this, the Denver traditional media is tripping over itself with laudatory comments about the Mapleton School District and the school "reform" measures it undertook three years ago.  Regrettably, they're not going to do much fact-checking beyond the talking point fed to them by District officials, because while it is indeed a fantastic success story that all 44 of this year's Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts' senior class have been accepted to college, the other numbers, not to mention the seamy history of the reform project itself, paint a far bleaker picture of the effectiveness of "small school reform" measures – and gives at least one voter cause for concern about the educational company Senator Obama is choosing to keep.

Your resident historiorantologist has lately been puzzling over the matter of how it is that Alberto Gonzalez and the current rubber-gavel-wielding "Chief US Law Enforcement Official" have not been brought before the World Court to stand for their crimes.  Clearly, it doesn't take the piercing legal intellect of a Harriet Miers to recognize that torture goes against everything Americans believe in – our nation is, after all, a product of the Enlightenment, that 200-or-so-year period starting around 1650 in which thinking humans chose to recognize science, redefine the roles of government and the governed, and repudiate things like tyranny.  Given this definition, of course, the aforementioned "legal" experts clearly are not Enlightened individuals, but closer examination of what actually went on before the bar back then shows that the Gitmo Gang would find themselves right at home dispensing "justice" in a court of that era.

So join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll look at criminal justice in the Age of Powdered Wigs – and may find that the current cadre of ethics-averse thugs running our penal/information extraction system would have been right at home in an Enlightenment court.

Lately it's become apparent to some of us here in the Orange Forest that if one desires to see one's diary reach the rec list, one's chances are greatly improved if the title includes a hint of conversion to Obamaism, a pillorying of Hillary, or the old stand-by, BREAKING!!!  Now, by nature, historioranters don't get to shout "breaking" all that often, but since you all seem to have abandoned Mike Gravel, and have said everything that could possibly be said about Barrackemiah and/or Billary, I'm left with little choice but to pander like Senator Clinton at a Great Silent Majority rally.

So join me, if you will, just outside the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll be scanning the skies, on the lookout for a school-bus-sized piece of space junk that NASA tells us (well, told us – the subject of this story broke literally and figuratively between 1973 and 1979) could crash/land almost anywhere on Earth.  Perhaps in our observations, we'll even get a glimpse of that rarest of celestial phenomena: A presidential candidate with a viable, workable, ambitious space policy.

This diary has its roots in the early 1980s, back when your resident historiorantologist was a diehard (or, to be more accurate, obsessive) participant in late-night sessions of Dungeons & Dragons - while unwittingly laying the groundwork for several later-in-life events which intersected at DailyKos.  Back in those days, a Commodore 64 was cutting-edge technology, and the Internet was still the stuff of WarGames antics – we who wished to live out Second Lives as elves, and paladins were left to our own imaginations (and handfuls of oddly-shaped dice) to create our collaborative realities.  In the process, many of us developed passions for literature, history, and storytelling that have been with us ever since.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll take a look at the Last Great Fad before computers absconded with the attention spans of America's youth.  I'll also – with many thanks owed to Swordsmith - finally give an affirmative response to those of you who've so kindly asked over the past two years if there'd ever be a published tome of Moonbat history: Yes, there is, it's about the Crusades, and it'll be out in June.

For anyone born before 1970 or so, there are certain images that are come to mind whenever the name "Iran" is uttered: stern, bearded men in black robes, angry crowds, graphics depicting blindfolded American citizens with things like "Day 334" stamped over them, Ollie North bravely disgracing his uniform and perjuring himself, John McSame exploring the intersection of 1960s pop music and the idea of raining death from the skies.  In short, the past 30 years haven't exactly been a model of how nations ought to think of one another.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll take a last look – a Parthian shot, if you will – at the recent history of Iran.  Maybe, just maybe, we'll get past some of the more extreme caricatures the Traditional Media has been foisting upon us – and perhaps be able to start formulating a de-Bushified foreign policy that relies less on blustering incompetence and more on genuine historical understanding.

One would think that a person who has lived through as much history as John McThuselah would know a bit more about it, but as we are all too painfully aware, historical savvy isn't exactly a wingnut strong suit.  It's thus sorta-understandable – even as it remains completely unforgivable – that Angry Gramps would be unable to distinguish between Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Persians, or really, anyone east of the Ural Mountains.  To the bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran set, "they" are all the same anyway, so any historical evidence that might indicate an outcome (of say, an invasion) other than their liberators-and-roses predictions can be safely disregarded.

Thankfully, we here in the reality-based community know better.  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, for a look at Iran in the 20th century – and hopefully a slightly better explanation for why the US government is not particularly loved in that part of the world than that old patriotic pabulum, "they hate us for our freedoms."

According to the latest wire reports, the verdict is in: even (and perhaps especially) he who would be the next Bush doesn't know crap about Iran.  This is unfortunate; one would think the disastrous invasion of Mesopotamia would've reminded us that we're talking about a region of the world that breaks empires as a matter of course.

Tonight's historiorant seeks to address just one of the lessons that needn't have cost us 4000+ of our own soldiers' lives to learn: that failing to accurately assess an enemy's capabilities frequently plays a major role in victories and defeats in Southwest Asia.  Marcus Licinius Crassus didn't appreciate that fact, nor did Hulagu Khan centuries later.  Join in the Cave of the Moonbat, and we'll see if we can't help to educate our misguided Republican brethren before they foist yet another hotheaded dumbass upon the American citizenry – and hopefully forestall our getting enmeshed in yet another Carrhae, Ain Jalut, or Chaldiran.

or The Really Real Reason Why '08 Is the Most Important Election Ever

I've been around this big orange block long enough to know that writing a conspiracy-theory diary ain't a real good idea if you're not hungry for donuts, but some things...well, they may be out on the edge of non-paranoid discourse, but don't really fall under the category of "conspiracy."  I've scoured the FAQ for any mention of "prophecy," for example, and have found neither reference nor prohibition.  That makes me glad, because it's to the arcane world of divination that I must now turn: it falls to me, it seems – your resident historioranter-cum-Cassandra – to alert our community to the most important hitherto-unmentioned aspect of the job facing whoever is elected in November.

The person we place in the White House this year will be the one sitting there, either as a lame duck or a president-re-elect, on December 21st, 2012.  This has special significance, since a great many prophecies seem to converge on that particular day – it's been slated to be the End of the World by seers from Ancient Mexico to Renaissance France.

In short, the next President will be in office when life as we know it comes to an end.

Our friends over on the other side of the aisle are having quite a debate over middle names;  watching the schism develop between the thinking conservatives and their knuckle-dragging cousins is getting to be some great popschadenfruedecorn fun.  On the turgid rec list at RedState, a "blog" entitled To Hussein or not to Hussein... has generated nearly 100 comments – a huge number, by their standards.  The more respectable of the commenters are pointing out that it's rather loud for a dog whistle; they're up against a contingent that somehow sees repetition as proof that they are not themselves racists.

Best of luck to the side fighting the good fight over there, but the point of this diary isn't to analyze the Unmasking of the Know-Nothings; it's to show what's being overlooked in the whole debate: That John McCain has a middle name, too!.  And you know what?

It's Sidney!!!  That's just ONE LETTER AWAY from spelling SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA!!!

Please join me below the fold for the sounding out of 2008's latest dog whistle, as well as some disturbing news about our plotting mates from Down Under.

When last we looked in on the history of Iran, the dust of Battle of al-Quadissiyah was just settling, and Zoroastrian Persia had fallen under the dominion of the armies of Islam.  As she has done with every other of her would-be conquerors, however, the culture of the conquered soon became inexorably tied to that of the new overlords; from Persian minds sprang some of the greatest achievements of the Golden Age of Islam.  Even gold won't glitter forever, though, and the forces of time and history exerted themselves on a succession of kingdoms and dynasties for several centuries before one proved strong enough to make the unification thing stick.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, for a whirlwind tour of nearly 1000 years of Iranian history, from the Abbasids to the Safavids, by way of the Ziyarids, if you will – plus an important announcement (he said grandiosely) from your resident historiorantologist.    

At the conclusion of our last historiorant, we left off with the Sassanids in pretty dire straits.  It was 636 CE, little more than a decade after they had had their sasses handed to them by the Byzantines in a series of battles across Mesopotamia, and only four years removed from the passing of the Prophet Muhammad.  Now fierce men bearing the star and crescent had appeared on the Euphrates; to Yazdgerd III, the last Zoroastrian king of the Persians, fell the task of defending Ctesiphon and the gateway to Iran.

So join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, for a look at the beginnings of a clash of civilizations that continues to the present day, as well as the many Iranian contributions to what would become known as Islam's Golden Age.  Along the way, we'll also be taking a contextual side-trip to the Founding of Islam – but only after pausing to read the sign about how, imho, we should be approaching historiographic minefields.

Would-be imperialists beware: You gotta be careful when you go to pick a fight with a country possessed of a 5000-year history, for inevitably, it will have in its historical record an example of every kind of victory and every kind of loss, and every kind of human triumph and failing in between.  In these countries, ideas like Human Rights aren't imports; they're the original products of ancestors and countrymen. Been through a few golden ages, followed by periods of decline and ruin?  Check.  Dealt with foreign aggressors and internal revolt?  Check. Been led by people that history remembers as "the Great," as well as by guys so incompetent that they make George W. Bush look adequate?  Check.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll take a look at Persia in the Classical Age – and find out that Iran's willingness (and ability) to go toe-to-toe with the West's greatest superpowers is not something that first emerged in the Era of Petroleum.  As a courtesy to the neo-imps among us, I give fair warning: We may also find that the Iranian contemporaries of Rome influenced the makings of our world far more than might first seem apparent.

Admit it: You've done it before.

No, not that; that's gross.  What I meant was, every once in while, you creep over to the wing of the house that you've been told not to got to, the one about which the rumors swirl dark and evil.  In the dead of night, perhaps, or for a few minutes from the anonymity of a work computer, you click over to Free Republic or Little Green Footballs or Michelle Malkin (sorry no links; I seem to have momentarily forgotten how to do that), and you marvel at the vapidity.  Bereft of ideas and unencumbered by conscience, these last defenders of the indefensible are a case study in the death of a political movement, and in their final throes (heh) they're apt to say the darndest things.

But every once in a while, a post like this one (danger: RedState) can actually do some good, either by helping a progressive see things in a different light or by exposing the vitriol that is the sole foundation of the "philosophy" of some wingnuts.  The one linked above, entitled Freakin' Awesome Obama Music Video did both for this moonbat, and I just gotta tip my hat to author Ericka Andersen.

There are two kinds of history going on in the Cave of the Moonbat tonight: that of an ancient Southwest Asian superpower, and the historiography of historioranting itself.  I've been doing this pretty-much-weekly history thing for nigh on two years, and with my impending anniversary, I figured now's as good a time as any to go back into the scrolls and update some of those first History for Kossacks – the ones that didn't have any pictures (nor, for that matter, many commenters), were less than half as long as a contemporary HfK, and predate even the word I now use to describe the manner in which I seek to tell tales of the human experience.

So join me, if you will, for a redux of the very first HfK series – a proto-historiorant on Persia, land of the Aryans, now updated to fit the format that evolved in its wake.  In addition to new maps, pics, and stage-setting for the impending Islamic invasion in Part II, it never hurts to take a refresher on a land whose history seems to include every major historical figure in the ancient Middle Eastern world, from Alexander to Zoroaster.

Assuming our patented circular firing squad doesn't wipe out too many of those who would otherwise cast a progressive-leaning vote in the general elections, we Democrats will win the White House come November.  While this is indeed fantastic – and probably the only outcome that will allow for the survival of an intact democracy – in assuming the reins of power, we'll have only taken the first step in undoing the vast damage that The Decider and his cronies have visited upon our land over the past eight years.

If "change" is to be "the economy, stupid" of this election cycle, then now is the time for us to talk about the changes we'll need to implement in order to restore our democracy to pre-Bushian levels of functionality.  We must ask ourselves: What putrid laws need to be undone, what emasculated institutions resurrected, which Manchurian Wingnuts fired, so that our nation might leave the 19th century and rejoin our allies in the 21st?

In short, what should be our next president's priorities as s/he leads the citizenry in its efforts to De-Bushify our mangled government?