Meritocracy

This picture has little to do with this post.  Just wanted to use it because I had none that did.

Interesting story over at Balloon Juice.  It's about how the military is trying to develop alternative fuels like solar and wind to power the expansive network of electronic devices that the modern military needs to survive.

Militaries are traditionally meretricious.  You rise and fall with your ability, because it really is a matter of life and death.  Peacetime militaries may be more political, but during wars, you really separate the wheat from the chaff.  The number of officers who washed out during the opening months of World War II was remarkable.

Anyway, the military sees a problem and has acted on that problem in an entirely logical way.  Gasoline is expensive and very expensive to bring into a warzone, especially a forward operating base.  Every gallon of gas NOT being used to power a generator in some godforsaken corner of Afghanistan or Iraq is a gallon of gas saved.  So the military is looking at BOTH conservation and renewables.

It makes sense.  It's good policy.  It's good economics.  It's good tactics.

Meanwhile, in the august halls of the United States Senate, rabid whack job Rand Paul is complaining that his toilets don't work, because he can't buy incandescent lightbulbs, but ladies can get abortions.  Honestly, you tell me if I'm making this up.

To be an officer in the US Military, you can be a conservative, you can be a progressive, but above all, you can't be mindnumbingly stupid.  OK, you can, but they keep you away from the important decisions more often than not.

Because we have embraced the Idiocracy, we can't say the same thing at home.