Hey, this is my 100th post. Congratulations, in a sense, to me.
The Poor Man points to a post by Brad DeLong, which in turn relates an email account of a talk by Seymour Hersh here at the University of Chicago. The talk was about the torture at Abu Ghraib, giving the very vivid impression that things were much worse than we’ve been told thus far. DeLong says “If what it reports is true, then once again it looks like the Bush administration is worse than I had imagined–even though I thought I had taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is always worse than one imagines.” An inspired formulation, very reminiscent of Hofstadter’s Law. I therefore propose DeLong’s Law:
The Bush Administration is always worse than one imagines, even when taking into account DeLong’s Law.
It’s useful to keep in mind, even if it’s no real help.
Update: Actually, DeLong has a few other laws (here, here, here), so I’m not being original.