Reticulating Splines
OK, I’m getting real close to making some changes in Doug’s Darkworld. Basically this is going to turn into a more or less pure blog where all I write about is current events, politics, and whatever random weirdness inspires me as I chronicle our civilization’s slide into war, denial, insanity, and chaos as the plague of infantile thinking corrodes our social structures at their very core. Yes, lots of fun to be had there.
At the same time, a lot of the menu bar above is going to disappear as I launch a companion site where I will post my single topic articles on science, war, and history. And, tadaa, some of it is starting to take shape. My first post over there is ready for visitors: Earth’s Place in the Universe: Where the heck are we anyhow? Enjoy, comments can be left either there or here.
On the local front, not much happening. Oakland has made it to number three when it comes to crime ridden American cities. It’s a shame, but not surprising. The last few mayors have been pretty corrupt or ineffective, and the recession hasn’t helped. The only thing I would add for the out-of-towners to understand, is that most of Oakland is just a typical American city, the crime is taking place primarily in west and south Oakland. As long as one avoids those areas, Oakland is just another city. And if you do go to West Oakland or the bad parts of the Fruitvale district, go during the day, wear a white T-shirt, and don’t piss anyone off.
Nothing much else new. Health care reform is still a joke, by the time it passes, assuming it even passes, it’s going to be so filled with special caveats for industry and the like that it will be little more than symbolic. In fact there’s every chance it will actually make the situation worse, since there’s one thing our modern leaders in politics and industry seem to have in common: unlimited greed to matter what the cost to the country.
Israel is threatening to bomb Iran again, Iran is making a big deal out of wargames to practice defending against an Israeli attack. Both governments are equally cynical, Israel is always playing up “threats” to Israel to bolster its militaristic government and occupation policies, while Iran wants to dispel social unease at home by rallying folks around the flag. Both sides benefit from this, so I don’t think there’s much chance of real war breaking it, this is political theatre. Hope not at least, the world doesn’t need another war.
Sooner or later the world always gets a war though. This, this is why the aliens haven’t contacted us yet. Well, and the fact that they don’t exist. Details.
(The above image is public domain under US copyright law, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. It’s captioned: With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank, at Haengju, Korea. (June 9, 1951) I just chose it because I thought it was an interesting picture, and to remind people that America’s overseas adventures have a human cost, something that seems to be overlooked frequently in our “debates” about foreign policy.)
“It doesn’t matter if the cast changes when the script remains the same.”
Not sure where I read my post headline, but it struck me as an apt description of the Obama administration. Or as I like to put it recently, the only difference between Bush and Obama is their skin tone. A concept the (possibly imginary) fellow above apparently doesn’t endorse. Apparently he was in a coma during the entire Bush Administration when all of Obama’s current policies were put into practice. Good thing he’s retired Navy, because if he was active Navy, the bottom line is clearly insubordination if not worse. But hey, hypocrisy is the hallmark of all hard core conservatives … and liberals! I think if a person is unable to come up with opinions of their own and just regurgitates what they saw on Fox News or read in Mother Jones, they’re pretty much doomed to hypocrisy.
Have I crossed the line into mocking yet? Is it OK to mock if you’re mocking everyone? Joking aside, ET had an interesting point the other day. It certainly does seem more fashionable these days to mock and name call. Of course it’s always been fashionable on a personal basis, but in recent decades more and more it seems like institutions are and other formerly august voices are doing it. Compare Walter Cronkite to Lou Dobbs or Rush Limbaugh. One of the things that’s cool about growing older, eventually you get a bit of perspective and can see that indeed, the “natural order of things” is in fact constantly evolving.
An example is gay marriage. I keep hearing people say that we need to preserve “traditional marriage” and thus can’t make any changes in laws about who can marry who. And apparently the folks who maintain this stance are unaware that if we are going to talk about “traditional marriage” in any historic sense … we need to make miscegenation illegal again. Because traditionally (until the 1960s!) it was widely considered a crime against God and nature for blacks to marry whites. And was illegal in many states. Yet I don’t hear any calls from the anti-gay marriage crowd to reinstate miscegenation laws. Yet if they are truly standing for “traditional” marriage, that’s what they should be doing. Curious, nu?
It’s Friday, so I’m allowed to wander all over the place. And while I agree with ET that mocking is a bad thing, and I do in fact try to avoid using labels, I could do more. I was thinking for example of writing an extremely sarcastic and mocking post about the people who are worried about the 2012 doomsday predictions. Then I thought about ETs comment and reconsidered. And it was also pointed out, again something I forget sometimes, even if logically the prediction is unfounded … the anxiety some people are deriving from it is very real indeed. Read an article the other day where an astronomer said he gets some very disturbing emails from people about 2012, IE they are contemplating suicide or even killing their kids and committing suicide so that they are spared the 2012 apocalypse. I’m pretty sure mocking someone like that isn’t particularly helpful.
On the other hand, while I agree we shouldn’t mock, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all difference of opinion are debatable. IE if one person says 2+2=4 and the other person says 2+2=5 … there’s no room for debate. If someone actually believes that 2+2=5, they’re wrong. I’m not going to mock someone who believes that, but I’m not going to debate them either. And I’m not going to hire them to do my accounting or build my house either. I’d make an Enron joke here, but then I wondered at what point does “poking fun at” turn into “mocking?” That’s the big problem, how does one determine what is a debatable difference of opinion, and what isn’t worth debating?
And as I get older, it’s getting even harder to tell. As someone once said about Martin Gardner, “I wish I could be as sure about anything as he is about everything.” Sigh. Oh well, that’s what this blog is for, to explore the boundary lines between what is real and what is memorex. And in that vein, I’ll conclude by “debating” a few of the claims in the above image:
GET READY TO LOSE:
PEACE: Well, we lost that when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, in fact Bush promised us a war that would last a generation at least. So peace is already lost, Obama can’t lose it anymore.
SECURITY: This concept is so nebulous as to be meaningless, but I don’t see Obama dismantling Homeland Security or cutting the defence budget.
DEFENCE SYSTEMS: Obama has raised the military’s budget, so even if some systems have been cut, they’ve been replaced with others. IE this claim assumes that all defence systems are equally valid … an unsupportable claim if their ever was one.
JOBS: Well, the economy was crashing just fine under Bush, predicting that it will continue its nose-dive is a no brainer. Blaming Obama when he hasn’t made any changes in Bush’s policies seems like a stretch to me.
GUN RIGHTS: Well, aside from the FACT that the Supreme court recently ruled that we do indeed have a constitutional right to bear arms, Obama’s position on the issue is hardly extremist. Well, unless one thinks there’s no debate possible on the issue.
LOW TAXES: Since the Reagan’s and Bush’s made sure our grandchildren will still be paying taxes to pay of the USA’s debts, so I’m a little unclear where the idea that there were any “low taxes” to lose to begin with came from. I do agree that Obama does seem amazingly willing to spend money we don’t have, but it’s not like Bush II had any problem with the concept.
SMALL BUSINESS: Again, Bush II was one of the most pro-big business presidents in history, it’s hard for me to understand how Obama following in his foosteps is now a problem?
SAVINGS: Honestly, not even sure what he means here. Americans have been losing their saving steadily since the mid/late 1970s, so it’s not like this is something new. And if he means that Obama plans to confiscate people’s savings, I haven’t heard any talk of that yet. (And it’s not like there’s a whole lot left to confiscate either.)
GOD IN PUBLIC: I been meaning to blog about this. God isn’t actually bound by human law, and he can be found anywhere and everywhere no matter how many laws are passed! So we’re talking about religious symbols and practises on public property … and people have been clogging the courts with that debate for decades, that’s hardly Obama’s fault.
FREE SPEECH Well, he’s still got his bumper stickers, doesn’t he? And again, it was Bush I who introduced the concept of “the privilege of freedom of speech,” and Bush II who declared he could strip Americans of their rights by labelling them “enemy combatants.” Obama can’t take away a right that was previously taken away from us.
Oh well, I still think Ron Paul was the best of a bad lot. Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and its use here is central to illustrating the post pretty much by definition. Credit and Copyright, who knows, but I found the pic here. The comments are especially fun, my favourite so far: “Ho hum, see what happens when there’s only two major parties =/ “)
“I’d have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough.”
Well, an army psychiatrist purportedly went off his rocker and shot a bunch of folks in Fort Hood, Texas. I say purportedly, because there is only one thing about this case we can be absolutely certain of. The army will lie. The US military is under absolutely no obligation to tell the truth about anything, has every incentive to lie, and has been caught in lie after lie after lie. All they have to do is flood the airwaves with their version of events, the media will dutifully parrot it, and people will believe it. Then later if the truth comes out, it will be buried in the back pages and most people won’t even hear about it, let alone believe it. Humans are funny that way, they will believe the first thing they hear, and pretty much never revisit the issue. I’m not of course saying there aren’t some fine honourable folks in the military, in fact some of the finest human beings I have ever known were career military. The modern US military is a business though, and their business is selling endless war. For the purpose of getting endless war spending and endless war contracts. And they do a fine job of it, aided and abetted by a lying media and lying government. Smedly Butler said it best, “War is a racket.”
Knowing this, it makes it hard to come to any real conclusions about the shooting itself. And as well, it’s going on very risky ground to draw any conclusions from a single incident. Some guy lost it and shot some people, hopefully there’s not much more to it than that. However, while the incident itself can’t tell us anything, the reaction to it can. And there it’s both interesting and depressing. A big deal will be made about the heroics of it all. It’s a pretty good bet that the alleged lone shooter survives, he won’t ever see the light of day again, let alone a civilian lawyer. It’s fascinating how quickly initial reports of multiple shooters and many friendly fire deaths almost instantly morphed into the lone shooter and heroic defence story. It’s almost uncanny how that always happens in incidents like this. Note previous paragraph about lies.
There will be a certain amount of Muslim bashing, that goes without saying. There will be a discussion about the combat stress our troops are suffering from, but all in a “support our troops context.” There won’t be a whole lot of discussion about why our troops are going halfway around the world to get their heads fucked up in wars to protect western corporate access to Asia’s oil and gas. That we won’t be discussing. It’s like watching doctors treating a man who has his hand stuck in a blender, but no one dares suggest it would be a lot easier to treat him if he would just pull his hand out of the blender. Basically a terrible tragedy that likely has some relation to our overseas wars will be used to justify same. Sigh.
As others have pointed out, the people who died in Texas won’t be counted as casualties of war. If war is such a great thing, why do we go to such great lengths to disguise and hide the true cost of it? I’d like to see a public debate on that some day. I’m pretty sure than when people act evasive, it means they have something to hide. God rest the souls of all the victims of these stupid wars, wherever they fell. War is bad, peace is good, how the hell did we ever forget that?
“War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
—Smedley Butler
“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”
—David Friedman
“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.”
—Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, ands is arguably a historically important image. Credit and copyright: AP Photo. It’s a picture of Howard Unruh, modern America’s first mass shooter, the day after his shooting. On Sept 6 1949 Howard meticulously shot and killed 13 people. He too was a war veteran, though in his case it seems he was just crazy. Crazy people usually aren’t very dangerous, the exception being paranoid schizophrenics like Howard. He is quoted in the title of this post. My only point here, restated, is that killing people really is nuts … but using people’s senseless deaths to justify killing more people, now that’s not nuts, that’s evil. Welcome to the “war on sanity.”)
Dictator Schmictator, what’s all the fuss?
Following up on last week’s post, a few observations on dictators. The “common knowledge” in the west is that they are always bad, with comparisons to Hitler usually cited to illustrate the point. So of course if some foreign leader is labelled a dictator by the west, people immediately assume the worst. And not only do they assume that dictatorships are bad, they also assume that the people living under them automatically oppose them and want to see them overthrown. As part of this assumption, most people seem to think that the only way to get rid of a dictatorship is through force, I mean, no dictator would voluntarily relinquish power, would they? Lastly, it’s commonly assumed, and frequently stated, that the USA opposes dictatorships on general principles and promotes freedom, democracy, and self-determination around the world.
The reality is little more complicated. OK, it’s a lot more complicated. First let’s look at the idea that dictators are almost universally despised by their subjects. This usually includes the codicil that since dictators don’t hold elections, they don’t need to worry about their popularity. To start with, some of history’s most famous and admired people, especially in their own lands, have been dictators. Julius Caesar, the original dictator so to speak, was wildly popular. Napoleon’s grave is still one of Frances most revered sites. Hitler and Mussolini were both swept into power by popular revolt, Hitler in fact had something like 85% of the vote in the election that put him in power, and both to this day have their supporters. And for our American readers, a certain President Lincoln assumed blatantly unconstitutional powers in his efforts to reconquer the Confederacy. Lincoln was certainly a dictator by some definitions (and in many people’s minds at the time,) yet he is one of America’s most revered national figures.
Then of course the idea that dictators don’t have to worry about elections or popularity. In this sense, the common knowledge is completely ass backwards. It’s the people who are elected who don’t need to worry about popularity. A dictator on the other hand has to worry about their popularity every single day, because if they become too unpopular, bad things can happen. And while the leaders of any nation to one extent or another have to be concerned with assassins, the problem is particularly acute for dictators. The Sword of Damocles hasn’t endured in popular culture for nearly 2000 years for no reason.
As for the idea that dictatorships are always bad and that force is the only way to deal with them, this doesn’t hold up well when compared with the historical record. In fact let’s review, in 1960 or so most of the world’s nations with a few exceptions, were dictatorships. Mostly right wing dictatorships. Salazar in Portugal. Franco in Spain. South Korea was a military dictatorship. And virtually all of Latin America and Africa, as well as Indonesia and other Asian countries. Not to mention Eastern Europe, virtually all dictatorships. Yes, during the Cold War dictatorship was the norm, almost always propped up by weapons from the USA or Russia. And yet somehow virtually all of these nations have some semblance of a modern secular parliamentary government now. Even more astounding, most of these nations made the transition from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy with little or no violence. And very very few of them were “liberated” by foreign armies. Actually, it’s not astounding at all, what is astounding that people continue to make the claim that armed revolution and/or external intervention is the preferred or only solution to the “problem” of dictatorships. The historical record clearly shows otherwise.
Lastly we come to the idea that the USA is a force for democracy and self-determination in the world, part and parcel of the idea that we are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan out of some principled opposition to dictatorships and tyranny. This one is so contraindicated by the evidence that it’s a little hard to even know where to start. So let’s start with 1953, when the CIA overthrew the popularly elected government of Iran and put the Shah in power, where he ruled as a dictator for 26 years. In 1973 we have the USA supporting a military dictatorship that seized power in Chile. And there’s the little problem of the USA’s support for mass murderous dictatorships by any standard in Indonesia and Guatemala. And today Egypt and Saudia Arabia, two dictatorships by any definition of the word are significant recipients of US aid. I could go on, the list of brutal dictatorships the USA has tacitly or actively supported is so extensive that it’s a wonder anyone buys the idea that the USA is some supporter of worldwide democracy.
Well, outside the USA it’s probably not particularly widely believed at all. Especially people who have lost family and friends to our efforts to “spread democracy” at the point of a cruise missile. In any event, that’s not the point of this post, though I will be getting back to America’s flying death squads soon. The points were, well, as stated above. In a future post I’ll discuss Lincoln and his seizing of dictatorial powers as well as some of my favourite dictators. Lot’s of fun to be had here.
(The above image of Hitler and Mussolini is public domain under US copyright law, at least I hope so. At the very least it is an historically important image, it’s not being used for profit, and I’m claiming it as Fair Use under US copyright law. Yada yada yada (Which is in the OED by the way.))
America, Land of Politically Correct Racism?
I saw this non news event a day or so ago and was going to pass right by it, but someone posted about it is one of my discussion groups. Then people commented on it. If spewing mindless invective can be called commenting. Sigh. So I was forced to actually examine the issue, which I suppose is a break from the post I was going to write about blowing up babies in Pakistan. Basically the above illustration is a Halloween costume that hit the shelves this fall. And shortly thereafter, some folks began complaining about it, and some stores pulled the costume. My initial response was, that’s kinda tacky if not right downright tasteless. My second thought was, gee, I sometimes think people who get upset about stuff like this are doing their cause more harm than good. I mean, no one would have even heard of this costume if it wasn’t for the publicity that calls to remove it from store shelves have caused. A superficial analysis, but that’s all I thought the topic was worth.
Then it got posted a discussion group I used to frequent. And, frankly, the reaction there surprised me. Basically everyone that weighed in on this issue made the claim that people who objected to this had no sense of humour and were being tediously politically correct. Those were the polite ones. there was also at least one racist diatribe. I made a post about how it wasn’t really a bit deal, but that I could see how some folks could be upset about it. And the group moderator told me my opinion wasn’t welcome in this country and I should go back to where I came from. Well, food for thought, nu?
First of all, let’s look at the claim that this costume is “just a joke.” Let’s see, it’s an illegal alien because it says so in big black letters. We know he’s a criminal because he’s wearing a prison jumpsuit. We know he’s not human because he’s not human. And we know he’s stupid because he’s carrying a fake green card. It’s not a stretch to say that this costume strongly (and intentionally) implies that illegal aliens are stupid, sub-human, criminals, nu? I’m pretty sure that most people would be at least a little uncomfortable with a costume that implied that some group they belonged to were a bunch a stupid, sub human, criminals. The point here is saying “It was just a joke” isn’t any sort of logical defence. Especially in a case like this, where I don’t even get the punchline. What, exactly, is funny about this costume? One lame pun?
What was more disturbing to me though is that attitude of so many that could be summed up as “If you’re offended by it, you don’t belong in this country.” Especially since many of the same were claiming that attempts to get the costume off store shelves was an attack on Freedom of Speech. Refusing to even acknowledge that people who disagree with them have a point while simultaneously bemoaning the perceived attack on “their” rights strikes me as more than a bit paranoid. It’s not a good sign, and more and more I am seeing this kind of polarization on some topics in America. And I mean polarization in that there’s no point debating with people who disagree, they aren’t going to debate. Until yesterday I thought I was in a reasonably mature discussion group, and boy, they showed me. They were willing to discuss some topics, but something politically charged like illegal immigration, and all they could do was wave flags and call names. Scary.
I know there’s always been an element of this in the right, but it certainly seems to be worse in the past decade. And Obama’s election seems to have galvanized this division further. A huge minority of right wing Americans see themselves as a persecuted minority, and that there’s this vast conspiracy to turn the country into some sort of socialistic fascist un-American nanny state. And I’m not the only one to see this divide either, I ran across this interesting article on interviews with Republicans. In any event, this is why I am avoiding some topics, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in debate.
Lastly, the thing I find most alarming about this, the same way I find 9/11 conspiracies alarming, is that is distracts people from the very real conspiracy going on. Wall Street, Washington Politicians, and the Military have joined in an unholy alliance to rule the USA entirely for their own benefit. Granted the right wingers do have one thing right, Obama is clearly a standard bearer for these folks. The idea that he has been making concessions in order to get some of his putative liberal agenda passed doesn’t pass the laugh test anymore. As the continued whittling down of his health care proposal shows, by the time it gets passed all it’s going to do is transfer yet more money upwards.
I don’t know where this country is headed anymore, but I still think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and is arguably a historically important image. And there is no way its use here could conceivably interfere with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. Credit and Copyright: Beats me. My next post will be about space exploration, one of the few bright spots in current human events. And I’m planning a post on “Ten Predictions for the 21st Century.” If Nostradamus can do it, so can I.)
Obama wins Olympic Gold Medal in Pole Vault, what’s next for our plucky president?
The Olympic committee stunned the world this morning when they awarded US President Obama a gold medal in the Pole Vault event. Explained the committee’s spokesman when asked how this could be, considering that President Obama had never pole vaulted nor competed in the Olympic, he said the committee was sure that if Obama put his mind to it, he could easily win the gold. “I mean,” continued the spokesman, “winning an Olympic gold medal has to be easier than achieving world peace, or even regional peace? And he was given the peace medal in the expectation of same.” The press had to admit he had a point, and the conference ended there as reporters rushed to file this incredible story. hehe. OK, that was fun. The only point I still want to make about the Peace Prize thing is, boy, if the best recipient the Nobel committee could find was someone they hoped would be a voice for world peace … we’re all in trouble.
Most or all of my posts are going to be extemporaneous ramblings for the near future as I concentrate on getting my new web site up and running. It’s much easier for me than focused posts which take a lot of research, and people seem to enjoy them. I will get around to many of the focused posts as promised, at some future date. The one on how a few inches of dirt set back the space program for example, and even the one about the Battle of Pegasus Bridge. That last one is proving to be a challenge, since the battle seems to have consisted of a few commandos blowing up an antique French tank, after which the Germans ran away. It’s going to be a challenge to spin that into a whole post, but I thrive on challenges. Well, writing challenges, I could do with a few less RL challenges.
Moving right along, I see from the headlines that McCain said we should avoid making a “historic mistake” in Afghanistan. Without even reading the article, I can guess what that’s about. Hint: He’s not referring to staying in Afghanistan long after it was obvious the situation was pointless and counterproductive. No, I suspect he’s referring to the myth that if we had stayed in Vietnam, we would have eventually prevailed. Sigh. I’ve covered this topic before: We Could Have Won in Vietnam. There are two things that really annoy me about this myth, the first is that it’s presented as a certainty. Rarely is anything ever certain in life, let alone when talking about major wars. And the second, is that it simply ignores the possibility that the war wasn’t such a good idea in the first place. I’m sorry, but “We can do no wrong and we will always prevail if we persevere” isn’t a good strategy for a person’s life, as a geopolitical strategy for a nation it’s ultimately going to be suicidal. Not to mention homicidal, but in America, it’s OK to blow up brown people in foreign lands. I mean, they must have done something to deserve it? Right?
And my, what a cheery start to the week. I’m actually in a pretty good mood too. I helped pour the foundation for a chicken coop this weekend, a real man’s vacation. Yes, the grentle reader read that right, a poured reinforced concrete foundation for a chicken coop. My buddy builds for the ages, what can I say. Looking at CNN, I see there’s nothing else going on. Or more accurately, CNN is only choosing to headline the most inane bits of “news.” Maybe some random day I’ll go through the headlines on CNN or one of the other major media outlets and point out both the utter driviality of what they are headlining, and the important stories they are ignoring. That would be a lot of work though, so not today.
On a final note, the NASA “bombing the Moon” mission didn’t kick up the expected plume of debris and ice that they were hoping for. It apparently kicked up a plume of something very dark, so no one from Earth was able to see it. As is so often the case with space missions, it may take a long time for the data to be analyzed so that scientists can figure out what really happened.
That’s enough for this morning. I did look up McCain’s speech, and while I was off the mark in details, I was pretty close in intent. McCain says it would be a historic mistake not to listen to general McChrystal and send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. So McCain didn’t have to actually say Vietnam, but it’s definitely Vietnam all over again. We had over 500,000 troops in Vietnam before our leaders finally realized that “a few more troops” wasn’t going to make a damn bit of difference. I guess we are going to have to learn that lesson all over again.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. Only a small section of the original image is being used, it’s not being used for profit, and it is an historically important image. Credit and copyright: Reuters. It’s actually an interesting image, see the entire picture and story here. It’s Obama getting the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit. As Reuters describes it: “It’s the country’s highest honor — named for the founder of the modern Saudi state.” Note the galaxy class oxymoron: “modern Saudi state.” There’s fodder for future fun.)
“Paranoia is reality on a finer scale.”
It’s been a weird week. And the high strangeness in the world is weirder too. The more I study world events and politics these days, the more disconnected from reality they seem. I suppose it’s always been the case to one degree or another every since the rise of the mass media in the nineteenth century, but I think the problem has reached new heights in the USA for a number of reasons. And it’s hard to even write about since these attitudes have so seeped into public consciousness, including mine, that even pointing them out is tricky. Of course, since when I have I let a topic’s difficulty to explain hold me back?
First I saw a thing recently about who was a better spokesman for the right, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. I suppose they have their points, but my mind still reeled. I’ve listened to Rush on a number of occasions, his talks are dripping with insults and name calling. Not to mention his habit of saying outrageous things just for their shock value, he recently suggested re-segregating buses for example. No disrespect intended, but someone who is constantly insulting and calling names probably isn’t attempting to seriously debate an issue. As for Glenn Beck, I’ve only seen one video of him, and it was shocking to me. He was going into histrionics over some email rumour that if you clicked on a certain web site, the government would take over your computer and you would give up a bunch of rights. He even went so far as to make a big deal about borrowing someone’s laptop to demonstrate, because he was afraid to use his own. It was like watching Geraldo Rivera open Al Capone’s Vault. IE, there wasn’t anything there. (And for the record, you CAN’T give up your rights by clicking on a web site or anything else, that’s why they are called inalienable rights. Don’t they teach civics in the schools anymore?) In most other countries, people who carried on like that would never be considered as spokesmen for a major political party, Hugo Chavez is the only current foreign leader who talks like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Can’t the right do better than that?
Speaking of journalism and weirdness, now we have this ACORN business. Some “journalists” went around to ACORN offices and apparently in some cases were able to get a few ACORN employees to say outrageous things. OK, so what? If one interviewed enough junior employees of any organization, you would soon enough be able to get someone to say terribly outrageous things … especially if you were going to great lengths to get them to do so. And this is being treated as some sort of major scandal or expose by the right, as if the actions of a few junior employees completely without context means something. If a temp janitor at the Republican Party Headquarters said similar nonsense, would it discredit the entire party? I mean, who were these employees anyhow, what footage aren’t they showing? This was a Borat style stunt, not serious journalism. Anyone with a camera and an agenda could create an expose this way, yet Congress is jumping onto the bandwagon to demonize ACORN over this. It’s surreal.
Speaking of surreal, one of our future presidents has been making his usual amazingly weird but well attuned to the modern sensibilities statements. He claimed that “failure” in Afghanistan would “intoxicate” terrorists everywhere. And went on to claim that pretty much every “extremist” on the planet would win if the US lost in Afghanistan. He literally makes it sound like there is this vast world wide conspiracy of “terrorists” that are fighting the USA, just like KAOS in the old Get Smart show. This isn’t just a simplification, it’s silly. Worse, he bases his argument on the idea that if we ever lose, our enemies will be emboldened. Reality check here, only some Americans actually believe that the USA is invincible and we never lose nor will we lose if we only put our best effort into it. Many Americans the rest of the world is under no such illusion, they know the USA lost in Somalia and Vietnam for starters, and even where we have bombed and bludgeoned our way to “victory” like in Iraq and Afghnaistan, and Kosiovo … the results have been less than stellar. “The Little Engine that Could” was a children’s book for God’s sake people. And General Petraeus is going to make a run at the presidency, God help us all.
Then of course there is the modern trend of being rude and insulting, and it’s cool. I don’t think I’m imagining that. That’s sort of tied into the trend of thinking that if someone disagrees with you, they must be stupid. It just seems like so much of public debate these days in on a very low level, and almost painfully obviously hijacked by special interests that don’t give a rat’s ass about the average American. And yet so many Americans, left and right, are absolutely convinced that their people at the top are sincere in their platitudes about democracy, freedom, and defending America.
Sigh, enough politics. Next week, some nice soothing posts about exploding stars, man-eating lizards, and a little known general who may very well be the most influential man in the history of the west. He also changed warfare forever and managed to completely annihilate armies vastly larger and as well equipped as his using the world’s first secret weapon … the shovel. Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, and if I knew who to attribute it to, I would. It’s an image of course of black helicopters, a mainstay of paranoid conspiracy theorists. I just liked it’s dreamy creepy quality. Black helicopters, fodder for another blog? Of course not! Christ, it would be like blogging about cattle mutilations or chupacabra. The world may be weird, but it’s not insane.)
9/11 and 9/12 … The Hangover
Well, it’s over. Another 9/11 anniversary is past, yes the most memorialized crime in history once again reared its ugly head. I wrote my own 9/11 post, but it was so filled with anger I decided to forgo it. And while I was reviewing what every other pundit on the planet had to say about 9/11, a whole bunch of Americans converged on Washington to insist that under no circumstances must America’s incredibly well paid health insurance industry death panels be hindered in their efforts. It’s been a strange weekend, but frankly, living in a country where many people think that the government actually helping sick people should be our lowest national priority is a little strange at the best of times. I mean, our goddamn prison population has access to better health care than tens of millions of Americans. Interesting national priorities.
I was asleep in a trailer in the Oregon woods during the 9/11 attacks. I was dreaming about huddling with some folks in the corner of a basement or some such from an explosion. And then I was walking along a road in an open area with a city on the skyline. On one side of the road was an endless pile of tan dust or sand. There was a rickety barbed wire fence and some brush between me and the dust, and I was looking for a way to get through it and look at the dust closer. Then I woke up from my dreams, went into the main house, and started watching cable TV true crime shows. The news of the attacks scrolled by, and that was that. For the first few moments I thought maybe it was some sort of War of the Worlds thing, like maybe a preview for a movie that had been mistaken for something real No such luck, 19 people had indeed hijacked airliners and used them as weapons.
And sadly within a few days the second hijacking took place and the real nightmare began. Within a week of 9/11 I knew that the “War on Terror” was going to make the “War on Drugs” look cheap and effective by comparison. What had been a terrible crime perpetrated by a tiny handful of religious extremists was parlayed into a terrifying existential threat to western civilization. The great terrorist witch hunt had begun, and while Americans were driven almost to hysteria watching out for terrorists jumping out of every corner and crying for the government to do anything to protect them from this threat … the rich and the military went on the greatest shopping spree in history. In fact they were so carried away with the thrill of having infinite credit cards, and a universal mandate, they even thought they could buy entire countries and reshape the world in their image! Yes, by God, good was finally going to triumph over evil!
Sadly, Iraq and Afghanistan, the first two countries in their heroic agenda have stuck in our craw, and despite never ending blood and money, don’t look like they will be transforming into the occupied post war Germany and Japan of our “greatest generation” anytime soon. Al Quaida is still around, even Bin Laden is still making the rounds, th0ugh he’s lost his edge. France is still around despite despite the fact that many of the proponents of the “War on Terror” had confidently written its epitaph. There’s no Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East, and just in general the Muslim hordes that were just over the horizon have failed to materialize. In fact except for a truly heroic pile of debt, some ungovernable occupied Muslim lands of our own, and a government/military/banker complex bloated beyond all reason like some great cancerous octopus … everything is pretty much the same as before the War on Terror. Yeah, Bin Laden wasn’t able to nuke New York, but there never was much chance he was going to do that anyhow. And yeah, terrorist attacks continue. As they have since the beginning of recorded history and will until human beings evolve past the shaved chimp stage.
Exit Bush, enter Obama, and we’re in a bizarre new land. Americans who for years stood by while Bush shovelled trillions out the door to bankers and the military are now up in arms because Obama wants to spend comparatively modest amounts on medical care for sick Americans? On one hand it’s nice that people are waking up to the fact that Washington has robbed us blind and that Washington’s credit cards need to be cancelled, on the other hand the anti-Obama and anti-liberal tone of it all was disturbing. Because I’m pretty sure most of these people were pro Bush, which hardly argues this is some national movement. And arguments on whether the march is spontaneous are pointless, because spontaneous or not they are benefiting the very efficient death panels we already have, the insurance companies who work so hard to make sure we have the most profitable and least effective health care system in the developed world.
And on top of this weirdness, boy, Obama is really blowing it. I suspected all along he was a clever politician with a silver tongue. Yeah, that’s an upgrade from a clever politician who only took the cowboy boot out of his mouth to change feet, but it wasn’t what we needed or were promised! Sadly it seems like Obama’s “strategy” so far has been to double down in Afghanistan and on the economy, and hopefully ram some sort of health care reform package through using the favours the former two generated. In fact for all practical purposes Obama has simply continued or even expanded on Bush’s policies, while liberals grow increasingly desperate to avoid acknowledging what the liberal intelligentsia knew from the beginning, Obama is no liberal. And as a last delicious icing to this giant cake of absurdity, Americans are having coniptions calling President Obama a socialist, a communist, and a fascist for doing exactly what Bush was doing!
So what’s really going on here? Beats the hell out of me. My current theory … I’m still dreaming in my trailer in the woods.
(The above image as proof that millions of people marched on Washington? Um, no, even though it was widely claimed as such. It’s a photo from some previous event, probably the Million Man March in 95. And an example of to what great lengths the partisans in this debate will go to, partisans on both sides I should add. I’ve seen credible estimates of 60,000 or more, up to hardly credible millions. I suspect the media is mostly ignoring it because even they aren’t really sure what is going on. In President Obama’s America, every day is Halloween I guess.)
“Right-wingers are telling children to skip school as a protest against Obama’s encouragement of students to stay in school”
The title pretty much says it all, we have gone from beyond partisan politics into some strange new world where no matter what Obama suggests, it must be some nefarious socialist plot. Yes, Obama is “indoctrinating” our kids, just for starters, but it gets worse. Terms like brainwashing, communist China, and Hiter Youth have been tossed out already. Here, for the record, is what the president proposes to tell America’s youth:
“President Obama announced that on September 8 — the first day of school for many children across America — he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education. The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.”
To characterize this as some sort of nefarious plot, is, well, silly. If a Bush or Reagan had addressed America’s youth with a message like this, the Republicans would be parading in the streets and waving flags. Instead, because a “liberal” is telling kids to stay in school and get an education, it must be part of some sort of liberal conspiracy to brainwash our children. It used to be that right wing pundits railed against stuff they didn’t like, now they rail against anything that didn’t originate from one of their own. And as well there’s also been a growing trend for years for them to characterize anyone or anything they disagree with as being stupid. I find this all very disturbing. Yes, I’m not thrilled with some of the stuff that liberal extremists say, but there isn’t a coterie of liberal media pundits making the same sort of, well, hate speech, every time a Republican leader makes any sort of proposal.
What bothers me here is that the right wing pundits and their fans aren’t getting it, Obama was elected. That alone says the average American is pretty liberal, and I mean liberal in the sense they are reasonably open minded about things like skin colour, and that they are tired of the endless negativity and scare-mongering from the Republicans. And now urging kids to get an education is something to be afraid of? Give me a break, I’m no Obama fan as readers may recall, but this is ridiculous. No wonder so many real conservatives fled to Ron Paul.
In other news, the unemployment rate just hit a 26 year high.
Brave new world insert, when I first copied the above link an hour ago the title of the story was just that: “Unemployment Rate Hits 26 Year High.” And now the story at the link is titled “Job losses ebb, but unemployment up.” I’ve heard about stuff like this before, amazing to see it in action. Could there be any more proof that the mainstream media is complicit in administration/corporate spin on the economy? Someone should start a website where they track these sudden watering down changes in mainstream news article, because it happens more often than one would think. — Doug
Well, I’m not surprised about the economy. As I have said before, the economy tanked because basing an economy on the upward transfer of wealth and consumerism can only go so far before the whole rotten edifice collapses. And instead of letting the gangrenous parts of the economy die, both Obama and Bush simply redoubled efforts to transfer wealth upwards. Bush at least knew he was passing the whole mess off on his successor, I don’t think Obama is going to be able to keep robbing the public to pay the bankers for four years, but sure looks like he’s going to try.
Moving right along, in other historic news, Neil Armstrong recently said at a press conference:
“It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind’s so-called ‘greatest technological achievement’ for me to realize I had been living a lie, ” said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. “It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico.”
Neil Armstrong admits the Moon landings were hoaxed? Of course not! The above appeared in The Onion, a satirical and spoof newspaper that prints all sorts of completely made up stories. The only reason I mention it is that two papers in Bangladesh mistakenly reprinted the story as fact. Um, oops.
And just because it’s been a long depressing week, here’s a few more fun stories from The Onion: “Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit” and “Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack.” And of course “Nation’s Unemployment Outlook Improves Drastically After Fifth Beer.”
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, and since it’s illustrating a link to itself, by definition it is the only image that will suffice. Lastly, my use of the image here in no conceivable way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. Credit and copyright: The Onion. And thanks to this article for inspiring me to run The Onion links. Wait, what is the picture above? It’s from The Onion News in Photos: Dye Pack Foils Art Thief.)
The Silence of the Clams
I’ve been working on a number of dedicated posts, but none has hit that point where it can be whipped into shape in an hour or two, so, a few random observations on the the world as it careens by. As always, stuff just keeps on happening.
Well, big fires in California. Not much else to say, it’s a price we pay for suppressing fires for a century. All that deadwood has to burn off sooner or later. I’m sorry for those who lost everything, but this was an entirely predictable event that both as a society and individuals we had the means to prevent. It’s not that hard to build a house that won’t catch fire. Nor that hard to build suburbs that have decent firebreaks. Sometimes I think humans are little better than ants. Moving right along, as we are on the topic of California, a girl kidnapped when she was eleven has turned up alive, held captive for nearly two decades by a religious nutbar. Sadly while this is a terrible case, it’s a lot less unusual than many would think. IE there are lots of women trapped in similar circumstances, so this case says more about our culture and society and religions than many people would be comfortable with. In other words, clearly fodder for a future Doug’s Darkworld blog.
In international news, the compassionate release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber got some people upset. Two points. Compassion is a good thing, it’s what makes us the good guys. Secondly, this guy didn’t blow up the Pan Am flight out of the blue, this was part of a nasty confrontation involving the USA, Iran, Israel, and Libya. And the role played by the USA and Israel is not completely beyond reproach. Indeed, it involves the USA shooting down an Iranian airliner, and Israel broadcasting fake terror broadcasts from Libya to convince the USA that Libya was a sponsor of terrorism. Yeah, some ally they are. In any event the Lockerbie bombing is a smaller part of a bigger uglier picture. Again, that sounds like something I should blog about someday.
I was reading that France made wearing the burqa illegal, a burqa of course is the head to toe covering that women in some Islamic areas wear whenever they leave the home. I have mixed feelings about the ban, but I can’t say I object. While I am a staunch defender of people being allowed to wear what they want if it’s for religious reasons, the burqa has nothing to do with religion and is a purely cultural artifact. If one moves to a western country, I think it goes without saying, that you don’t automatically get to bring all of your culture with you. Otherwise people would be allowed to bring slaves with them just for starters. And since the burqa is largely (if not entirely) about keeping women in a subservient position in society, I don’t have a problem with it being outlawed. And I should add that it’s the face covering part that is primarily being outlawed, though France outlawed wearing the Islamic head scarf in schools as well.
It gets worse. The latest controversy is a woman who was thrown out of a public pool in France for wearing a burquini. A burqini is a burqa designed for swimming in. The lady in question and her burqini are illustrated above. The claim is that this had nothing to do with religion, it’s just that French public pools have strict requirements about what one can wear, and for sanitary reasons it’s pretty minimal. Me are required to wear speedos for example, which apparently comes as a shock to American men visiting France. Oh well, I’m sure the French will sort it out, they survived Caesar and Hitler, a few Muslims arguing about appropriate women’s wear isn’t going to bring about the end of French civilization and culture. In fact the French have a pretty good track record at stopping Islamic invaders, for those who forget, the French were the ones who stopped the Islamic invasion of Europe in its tracks.
In American domestic politics, if one wants to find out what real leftists think, check out this site: Not My Tribe. I find it an interesting read, but my main point here is that so many think that the Democrats and Obama are leftists, when in fact they are only symbolically to the left of the Republicans. I mean, neither party is actually advocating leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. We have a choice between Democratic interventionism or Republican interventionism abroad and between deficit spending or more deficit spending at home. Yeah, some choices. In other web site news, I came across Sourcewatch. Basically, there’s a lot of fake grassroots organizations these days, and with this site I can at least see who is behind what article. Granted neither of these site above can be described as truly balanced, but that goes for any web site. Even Doug’s Darkworld, but at least unlike many, I am at least trying for a certain amount of objectivity, if one tries to be objective, one can be sure of offending almost everyone! It’s the secret to my amazing lack of popularity.
Coming soon: How to Survive the End of the World in 2012, What if there was no USA?, and I reveal my incredible plan to end all war while still keeping our military parades and obscene “defence” spending.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and frankly I couldn’t find any credit or copyright info on the very main stream site where I found it. Credit: TimesOnline I guess. The title of this post? That’s from an upcoming post about “Movie sequels that will never and should never be made.” Others would include “Batman Conceived” and “Batman, the Gestation.” Suggestions welcome.)
