What Shall We Talk About?

It has been reported in Terra Daily and many other sources that scientists are getting close to creating life-according to their definition of it.
  
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/US_scientists_close_to_creating_artificial_life_study_999.html  
US scientists close to creating artificial life  
by Staff WritersWashington (AFP) Jan 24, 2008  

"US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday."    

It is all very interesting. And there is the standard warning which appears everywhere, from the "grey goo" of nanotechnology to genetically modified food to the spread of nuclear technology:  

"And ETC, a Canadian watchdog group that uncovered Venter's patent application for M. laboratorium, worries about accountability. "While synthetic biology is speeding ahead in the lab and in the marketplace, societal debate and regulatory oversight is stalled, and there has been no meaningful or inclusive discussion on how to govern synthetic biology in a safe and just way."  

Is there ever any meaningful debate about any of the truly weighty and important topics in the USA? If something can be construed to make money, it gets a green light. The only offspring of the Electronic Revolution debarred from existence seems to be child pornography, which was outlawed. And when you consider that it was only the pornography of a sexual nature that was outlawed-the pornography of children starving and being denied medicines was left untouched-one realizes how stand-offish the USA is when it comes to forbiding the exercise of a potentially lucrative idea.

The USA does not talk about what they do. The Presidential selection process is a competition between Donors, Lobbyists, Big Corporate Media companies combined with a beauty pageant which analysts describe using Sports metaphors. Nano Tech is implemented with very little discussion of environmental impact. What discussion there is is merely pro forma and has no impact on the use of the technology. The FDA is seriously at the verge of allowing Genetically Modified food to be forced into the mouths of the populace by not insisting that GM food be labelled as such, the rationale being that a great number of people would never in their wildest dreams eat GM food. Hence, if the GM food were to be labelled, the sales would be adversely impacted and Return On Investment would be handicapped.

AND when it comes down to a choice between the health of the people and business, business usually wins the first 10 rounds. Only when the toxins have accumulated within the bodies of the parents and their children and possibly their childrens' children will business be brought up on charges, and the people may win in technical knockout. Universal Health Care is a shibboleth to Republicans and a dream to Democrats. What it is not is a serious topic of national discussion. Then there are the global interests to be considered.

Clausewitz once wrote that war is the continuation of policy by other measures. What policy?! Is there a foreign policy other than that ingrained in the hearts of the career members of the State Department? What was the rational and reasoned and nationally discussed foreign policy that led to the War in Iraq?

At least Vietnam had the benefit of having had a policy-albeit an insane, parochial, and short sighted one-behind it. War with Iran? What policy does it serve? The perversely childish policy of supporting every Likud politican who happens to sit in the Knesset or every Christian Zionist pastor who can draw a flow chart of the will of God is NOT a policy! It is the act of the mentally and spiritually bankrupt.

It seems that national discussion is too reminescent of national planning or some other communist notion, the ideal being: take a melting pot, pour in a coupl'a million huddled masses, allow them liberty in the fringes of society far from power, heat and mix well, then pour the resulting fondue into the streets of gold. (Or use the sweet fondant to ice the cake...whichever.) At no point do we discuss anything, particularly any long term results which might make us seriously question the wisdom of our short term goals. Discussion reeks of Community and Involvement and that whole "It takes a village" thing. The ruling paradigm is the autistic savant whose dysfunctional apotheosis is $.