I must say that I find all the fuss over the supposed humiliation of ex-mass-murdering-fascist-dictator Saddam Hussein because his ENT exam was shown on tv to be quite curious. In all my years of having doctors peer at my uvula with the aid of tongue depressors I had no idea that I was undergoing something that should only be spoken of in whispers, and that the very memory of having my throat and teeth examined should now bring a blush of crimson shame to my face. As I said in the comment section of the above-linked post, you would think that Hussein had been stripped naked and displayed in a public square in Baghdad.
But I can identify this ostentatious display of compassion on the part of Cardinal Martino and others: I believe it has to do with something the Christians call "pride." Remember that? "I'm better than you," these caretakers of Hussein's human dignity are saying. "I'm so full of love for humanity that I even refuse to feel anything but pity and sorrow for mass murderers! Beat that, Americans/Righties/Warmongers/Whatever!"
I also find this concern over Hussein's sensibilities amusing in a culture which seems to have othewise consigned human dignity to the landfill. Suddenly the same "liberal," "progressive" forces that want to have sex ed in kindergarten and are up in a fuss because some woman in Texas got arrested for selling a dildo also seem to be behind this new prudery concerning a ruthless fascist dictator's feelings. Can you spell "hypocrites"? I knew you could.
Update: Lee Harris (no relation) on moral instinct versus moral imagination. Via Instapundit.
Second update - I just can't get enough: Hey, compassion junkies, is this better? (Via Damian Penny.)
To call "treason," that is. I ask that in all seriousness. I mean, what else could this statement:
And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we’ll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We’ll bring you in.
by Wesley Clark -- who, I might add, is a general in the United States military -- be but treasonous in attitude if not intention? And I thought Clinton's Europandering was bad. Wait for the "Clark didn't really mean it that way" ass-covering to start soon, if it hasn't already. There was a time when the thought of consulting foreign governments in matters of our own security would not have crossed through the minds of someone who was vying for the presidency, much less been allowed to pass though their lips into the open air. Times such as the date of the founding of our country. But loyalty and the idea of the welfare of the citizens of one's own country coming first are so outdated, right? Good-bye Democratic Party, it was nice knowing you. (Via exit zero and isntapundit.com.)
*****
In other news -- I know I had promised a daily post. Well I don't live for you people! I'll blog whenever I want! (Wild-eyed stare.) Heh. Actually, it's been a case not of having nothing to say, but having too much, and having it jam up in my head whenever I have tried to write. For instance: did you know that there was a pro-coalition, anti-terrorism rally in Baghdad yesterday? It appears that the media (the professional media, that is) didn't. Actually, I am sure that they knew quite well what is going on -- blogger bigwigs like Glenn Reynolds and Jeff Jarvis have been promoting the hell out of it, and news media organs haven't ignored these guys in the past. (Jarvis works for the media -- I used to read his things in TV Guide -- for godssakes.) So I am sure that the downplaying and almost-total-ignoring of this event was deliberate. The news people seem to have decided that being reporters on the scene isn't enough: they want power to influence world events too. And they seem to have decided that they want to influence world events in a way that makes for lots of great dramatic news (explosions! dead bodies! people suffering!) instead of boring stuff like Iraqis wanting to have a normal life under a non-totalitarian government. What a surprise.
They are shameless: I opened my city's paper today, looking for Iraq stories, and I found this heart-wrencher (registration required, use "laexaminer" twice) about a dog that had to be put to sleep because of a regulation against having dogs in a US army encampment. Of course it was a terrible story; the law certainly sounds like it was written (and enforced) to please some martinet somewhere -- though I can think of a dozen reasons why there might also be good reasons for having such a regulation. (Animal-born diseases, the possibility of distraction caused by an animal underfoot, and the danger of a dog-bite leading to a lawsuit are three that come to mind.) All the same, a sad tale -- and yet, I wonder why that story was one they chose to report. There was no possibility of saving the animal: the dog was already dead at the time of the story's writing. I can only suppose that the purpose of writing this up was to show that our military is run by cold, cruel people who won't even save the life of a helpless dog (if you didn't know, life generally sucks for dogs in Arab countries; let's just say Mohammed was by all accounts a cat person), and to destroy yet another few molecules of morale. I know that reading the story left me depressed -- even though the dog at least had some people (the soldiers who adopted it) show it some kindness before it died, something that many dogs don't get.
Then there is this column, by a Gulf War I veteran and author named "Joel Turnipseed." (I wonder if he is any relation to that Tom Turnipseed weirdo who writes for Commondreams.org?) The column is all about how we shouldn't worship heroes in wartime. Now there is nothing wrong with cautionary advice when it comes to deciding who is a hero or not; after all, this is an age where it is considered "brave" of entertainers with a gajillion fans to make a pouty sad face and say "war is bad!" on teevee. But that isn't what Turnipseed is getting at. He's another of the morale-destroyers, and I can't help thinking what a soul-smothering suck in person he must be after reading these words of wisdom:
Why are we so desperate for heroes, anyway? The ancient Greeks, who taught us the term, found the word inseparable from tragedy, intertwined with disaster by hubris: A hero was someone they feared as often as they praised.
Leaving aside the almost total misunderstanding he has of ancient Greek attitudes, what exactly is he trying to accomplish with his rambling and unfocused maunderings? All it communicates to me is that, like many faux-hip cynics, the only person "desperate for heroes" to worship is Mr. Turnipseed.
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One thing the pro-news people couldn't seem to quit babbling about was the refusal of the coalition to let France, Germany, Russia, and Canada play our reindeer games in the rebuilding of Iraq. The notion that the people who had spent blood and money on Iraq get to be the ones who decide who gets to profit off the rebuilding of that country seems to have come as a shock to the above-mentioned foreign bodies as well as many of the media squeakers. Of course, the idea that one would have to have cast-iron balls to go up to someone you've stabbed in the back (such as France et al re the US in Iraq) and expect to be treated like bestest friends does not seem to have occurred to the wounded parties. What's that faint whiny sound? It's the smallest violin in the world, boys, and it's playing just for you.
More later, possibly. I'll open comments on this one for a while. Get your digs in while you can!
Erm. I was always under the impression that Taiwan was a defacto independent country that most of the world (including the US) didn't recognize "officially" because they were afraid of and/or greedy for trade with Big Red China. When did this change? (Yes, I am surprised that anyone is really taking seriously -- from the point of view of what the mainland Chinese want rather than as a threat against a sovereign nation -- the usual blusterings from said large country's government over Taiwan's "bid for independance.")
In other news... I have no other news at the moment. Except that I am still carless and broke. But I went for my drug test today (my boss drove me) which was the one remaining thing I had left to do before they could start processing me to add me to their payroll. I am hoping for a little bit of a raise. Also: I'll be tweaking the site just a bit more, but I guess this look will be it for the month.
According to Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London (and apparently at least one ant shy of a picnic), current fascist dictator president of the US, George W. Bush, is
...the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.
Really? Cool. That ties up my vote. (Sorry, Cthulhu!)
Via A Small Victory and Jeff Jarvis comments as well.)
Don't hate the UN yet? Get a load of this:
Small countries in the United Nations have been arguing to put the Internet under the control of the UN so that countries can more easily monitor (read: control) Internet content. It's on hold for now, but this could become a very real censorship problem, very soon. Some nations have gone so far as to suggest "monitoring boards" for internet content.
Oh, I'll just bet they have. Can't let that freewheeling interchange of ideas get, you know, out of hand.
PS: what do you want to bet the most strident of the überloons who think John Ashcroft has bugged their modems because they have Ché posters on their dorm-room walls will be screaming in joy at the idea of the blue helmets "monitoring" the internet?
(Via that puppy-blending, secret-misogynist Glenn Reynolds.)
I. Wherein I insult the Art World
I really need to get out of the house and do things, but I decided to get to this first:
I was rather mean to Rossi in the comments to this post of Michele's. I feel rather bad about it -- not about the necessity of being mean, sometimes you just have to put the smack down, but about the object of the smack down. From what I have read of her blog, Rossi seems to be a nice person; unlike me, she seems to be compassionate, kind, creative, and have normal human feelings. But -- when people start saying things like "bush is the scariest thing to hit this country
since mccarthur" ("mccarthur?" He was never president; surely she means McCarthy; but he was never president either) and "oh bring back clinton" it just drives me crazy.
For one thing, no one is going to bring back Clinton. He had his eight years already. That's what you get -- two terms. I swear, these people who are always going about screaming about the "fascist Bush junta" and "the Coup" would cheerfully have elected Clinton president-for-life and not seen any contradiction between the two attitudes. But her comment made me remember something I had wanted to blog about but had put to one side: the reason why so many artistic people loved Clinton and hated Bush. Here is a portion of that thought from my first comment to Rossi:
Clinton was a flatterer. I think that is why so many people miss him. People love to be flattered and talked up.
And no one loves it more than an artist. While many artists -- writers, actors, painters, etc. -- have often claimed to be iconoclasts who look at all politics with a skeptical eye, I have observed otherwise: artists will fall for any clever politico who praises them and throws them a party and gives them money, though the latter two things are not necessary. The praise is usually more than enough. (Most artists really aren't in it for the money; if only such an innocent object was their goal.) And for the President! of the United States! to come to their shindigs -- and talk to them and ask their advice (kinda) -- ! Well, it sure is a great way to get people with a lot of tv cameras on them on your side. Clinton was many things, but he was not a fool.
(Side note -- for some celebrity vs. Clinton backlashing, check out this Richard Gere slam on the Clintons. Though I am not sure Clinton did "nothing" for AIDs victims; and I am not sure what Gere thought he could do anyway -- lay his hands upon the sufferers and heal them?)
Clinton was (and is) a flatterer; Bush most certainly does not have this skill. I have not heard one instance of Bush attempting to reach out to the art world and win their hearts and minds. And they can't forgive him for it. Though -- would they even let him? Their hatred of Bush seems to come prepackaged; and I know why. See, they would have been okay with Gore in office, because, although he seems to have no more shmoozing skills than Bush does, Gore at least is seen as something of a Clinton protege -- so if they couldn't have their beloved Bill, at least they'd have someone who basked in the Great He's aura for a number of years. And I'm sure Gore would have kept the suck-up-to-Hollywood tradition going; a wise choice, considering how many celebrities are registered Democrats.
But Bush got to the Oval Office instead. And he made it clear that in many ways he was the Un-Clinton, not the least of which is the fact that the White House spare bedrooms seem to have been celebrity-free lately. Hell hath no fury like a celebrity scorned.
There is another reason most artists and artistic people hate Bush: he's just so damn dull. Dullness, being boring, is a capital crime in the art world. Think of it -- once Bush got the keys to the Oval Office, remember the news of the new dress code? Out with the jogging suits and sneakers, in with the traditional business attire in D.C. Drabwear colors (black, gray, brown, navy blue). No wonder Howard Dean, with his exciting neckties, is getting so popular among the Democrats.
The problem with Bush is that he is not exciting (say what you want about the Clinton administration, there was certainly no knowing what he or his staff would get up to next, and some people like that kind of uncertainty). He's not skilled at flattering dictators, his speech patterns go clunk (though he is getting better; if only he didn't have that high-pitched voice), his idea of a good time by all reports is watching football on teevee -- I don't even think he's into Zane Grey novels like Reagan was. What Bush is is a businessman, and if you have spent any time at all employed by a company large enough to have a setup of CEO, managerial staff, and so on you will recognize Bush's methods. I don't know if they are the best methods for running a country and a war, but they are SOP for someone like Bush. Artists don't get this: few of them have had traditional 9-to-5 jobs and those who have were often absolutely fish out of water and hated their jobs so much they find it impossible to look with any sympathy on the denizens of that world who wanted to be there. Bush-haters of the irrational kind seem to almost want him to be a slavering demon who has scores of Arab children chained in a basement; that would be so much more exciting than the dull, crass, drab reality. Therefore: Bush = Sauron, and worse, he has the ring. We are all doomed, but doom is so poetic.
In order to drive heretics back into the Democratic Party fold, Matthew Yglesias, Professional Writer™, has dropped this load of crap into Blogostan like a ten-ton fertilizer bomb. Everyone has fisked it; why not me? Okay, I'll begin:
Take a deep breath. Look in the mirror. Take another deep breath. Look at some photos of your liberal friends and family.
Oh go fuck yourself, Oprah.
I guess I don't have the patience to deal with this sort of thing after all.
(Via Michael J. Totten. Best smaquedown, though, comes from Armed Liberal -- though mary of Exit Zero rocks the house in Yglesias's comment section.)
Belmont Club has a few observations about the anti-American antics of media outlets like the BBC. I especially liked this passage, since it sums up my own disgust at what the pro-news creatures have been spouting lately:
There is something disgustingly craven about an entity whose courage stems entirely from the conviction that those who it reviles will be too decent to strike back. Perhaps the most appropriate fate for the BBC is simply to remain what it is. Still, it is comforting to know that if civilization should perish under the heel of Islam the destruction would encompass those who jeered loudest as the valiant manned the walls.
He suggests that it is ironic that the best thing that can happen to organizations like the BBC is for the War on Terror to succeed, since they are apparently so against every aspect of it. I suggest that this is because they seem not to realize that this is a real war, and that they are really in danger if we lose. I'm not sure what to base this on. Perhaps it was because our side, as it was then, lost (or rather, gave up on) the war in Vietnam and nothing much bad happened after all (to journalists, that is; a few million or so Vietnamese people did not exactly have a thrilling time). But I think it is because so many of these antiwar babies grew up on a steady fodder of World War Two movies. World War Two, see, was a real war, with clearly delineated sides, uniforms, an Evil Villain right out of central casting, and everyone back then knew exactly what he or she stood for and never deviated from that course. Or so it seems to people; the idea that there was -- gasp -- just as much grousing, backbiting, uncertainty, and appeasement-mongering during the Big One is shocking to today's crop of Mirandas. But leaving that aside, I also think that journalists such as infest the BBC and other networks show a condescending attitude of near-colonial proportions towards the people they report in areas of the world like the Middle East, and as we are always being told ad nauseum, memories are long in places like that. No one likes being treated like a stupid child, least of all crazy terrorists who want to kill infidels for Allah. Believe it or not, making war on these people is one of the nicest things any Westerner has ever done for them; it certainly has given them a sense of validation. Isn't that what life is supposed to be all about?
I've decided to close comments on the "Horses" post. It's not that the conversation was all that vitriolic, but I am tired of people posting bloodless, mind-numbing comments about this and that court ruling, using all sorts of euphemisms and abbreviations ("PVS," "ANH") to conceal the fact that they are talking about starving a helpless person to death because she is an inconvenience to someone. I. Do. Not. Care. about what the law has to say at this point. I have no influence upon the goddamn courts, and thanks to the near-religious awe so many people seem to apply to the court system, neither does anyone else who isn't involved in it. Anyone else who posts anything about this or that judge's ruling in this or that case will have his or her comment deleted, whether pro or con. Sorry all those law people out there who read my blog; but my blog, my rules.
Reader Michelle Dulak sent me a link to Mickey Kaus' take on the Terri Schaivo case. Mr. Kaus has a stronger stomach than I -- he listens to NPR. Here is what he heard:
a) Melissa Block introducing Jon Hamilton's report and declaring that the governor's action "goes against more than two decades of legal and ethical decisionmaking."
b) A bioethicist who is "saddened" by the intervention to reinsert the feeding tube.
c) An explanation of "persistent vegetative state" from a neurologist who actually testified for the husband, Michael.
d) A representative of the American Medical Association who seems to support letting the husband decide.
e) Hamilton noting bioethicist (b)'s opinion that there is "little question the Florida legislature will eventually be overturned."
Here is part of his reaction:
Given the actual facts in the Schiavo case, I'm not sure which side I support. But I gag when NPR commentators glibly talk about upholding Terri Schiavo's "right to die" as if she herself had exercised that right--e.g. by writing a living will--as opposed to having her husband exercise that "right" for her when she's unable to contradict him.
I'm glad I am not the only one who noticed the pretense that Terri Schiavo is a conscious participant in this debate. The problem is, we are now in our culture so focused on the need for everyone's individual viewpoint to be important that we are incapable of dealing with someone who is... incapable of formulating an individual viewpoint. Unless they are babies or senile old people; we'll give in-duh-viduals a pass then. (Well, mostly.) But when confronted with a woman who is in what should be the prime of her life who is basically an infant, many people seem to go into a weird state of denial. The people who think she is better off dead seem (I say "seem" because I don't want to be accused of pretending to be a "mind-reader," but if I can't try to figure out human motivation from what I know and have observed, I may as well stop writing altogether) to be applying her case to their own lives and their own instinctive revulsion at the thought of being reduced to such a state.
There are what I will call evolutionary reasons behind the instinctive negative reaction that human beings have towards the weak and the helpless. Back in the good old days when we were small tribes of primitive humans wandering the African plains, having to tend to a crippled adult could be the difference between getting food and becoming food. Or was it? Some evidence suggests that the reasons humans evolved (if you believe humans evolved) into the dominant species is because we were physically (compared to the rest of the clawed and fanged animal kingdom) weak and helpless, so we had to grow bigger brains and figure out how to make tools and weapons to compensate. That being said, the problem of the strong both despising and exploiting the weak has been a problem throughout human history. The best of our culture has been the result of efforts to restrain this part of our nature. So what does it say about humanity when so many of us can look at a helpless person like Terri Schiavo, and condemn her to death for the crime of being useless? Because that is really the only reason I can see for people wanting her dead, once we strip away the self-protective verbiage about how "she couldn't possibly want to live this way," is the fact that she can't "contribute" to society in any way people feel is meaningful anymore. She can't be a wife or mother, she can't hold down a job; so she deserves to die. As Mr. Kaus points out, she isn't in any pain, and she isn't dying of a terminal disease (except for that terminal disease called "life"), so the only reason to kill her is because the very thought of her existence is a bummer to some.
Well, my pretties, she's not the only one in this condition. Why don't we kill all the vegetables? After all, it's unlikely that they will all wake up like this fellow did. And they are sucking up resources. (All that oxygen! You know everytime a braindead person breaths an African child faints. And those cans of Ensure could be saved for when our celebrities become senile. And all those people taking care of all those brain-dead relatives could be free to go on Mediterranean cruises or something.) So why don't we just pass a law that says if you get into a car accident, get sick, or sleep too long and someone attached electrodes to your brain and doesn't get a reading, off to the glue factory you go! After all, we have a Brave New World to build; we ain't got time for no gimps.
Update: here's some discussion on the law stuff behind this all. Visit while the Blowspot link works! And the first commenter noted something I hadn't thought to touch on (I can't do everything): the woman Michael Schiavo is with now wants to marry him why exactly? I sure hope she doesn't let him take out a life insurance policy on her.
I've been writing this post in my head for about two days now. I wasn't going to post on the Greg Easterbrook flap, because everyone else (see the links) had already said enough. I was driven to comment in Michael Totten's post on it after reading what Dipnut had to say. (Scroll down for my comments.) My take on the matter is that Easterbrook is far from anti-Semetic, but that he is guilty of using an anti-Semetic stereotype to make his point. I believe that it is possible to use anti-Semetic stereotypes (as well as other racially or ethnically offensive stereotypes) without actually being a Jew-hater or any other kind of racist. Do I believe that this is the right thing to do? I do not. But people do it all the time. People are careless. People also make dumb decisions which seem good at the time; I am sure that Easterbrook thought that using this stereotype (money-grubbing Jewish Hollywood exec) would be a good way to get people's attention. Well it sure did that.
Therefore, I thought that the contention that Easterbrook was an anti-Semite was ludicrous. I think that the reaction he got from readers alone was enough punishment -- after all, his main crime, to me at least, was against the English language. (Why are so many lousy writers paid writers? Never mind, that's an argument for another day.) Firing him from ESPN and removing all his columns from their website was overkill -- as many people have pointed out (see the Instapundit link above), the sort of overkill you can expect from a Disney-owned media company.
And no, Mr. Hackbarth and Matthew, I do not agree that it is the fault of bloggers that Easterbrook got canned. What, we aren't to say anything about someone's stupidity for fear they might get fired? It was one thing to be cautious when someone's life was possibly on the line (remember peoples' fears about Salam Pax when Saddam was still in power?); it's another thing to insist we worry about every media writer's job. The media is a shark pond; if you get careless you'll get eaten. If Easterbrook didn't know it then, he knows it now. If that sounds heartless of me, too bad. Sometimes baby needs to get burnt before he learns not to touch the stove.
Be that as it may, I also agree with Dipnut when he says: "But it seems to me what's really going on here, is you can't use the word 'Jew' in a sentence anymore without being ridden out of town on a rail by a bunch of outraged pantywaists." He exaggerates only a bit. I can state that this is true because it happened to me. Read on:
Full disclosure: once in the long ago, BB (Before Blogs -- well, at least before I had my blog), I was an occasional poster on an X-Files discussion forum. Threads were pretty free-wheeling; the only rules seemed to be Stay On Topic and Don't Sign Your Posts. (It drives me crazy to this day to see people sign their comments when their name appears in the comment footer.) Anyway, one day discussion turned to David Duchovny's injunction against Chris Carter when the latter sold syndication rights for the show without giving the actor a cut (or a fair cut) of the profits -- or maybe it was for not consulting the actor beforehand, I don't remember. Anyway, I decided to quote (or paraphrase) the actor's comments from some interview where he said Carter should have known better than to attempt to mess with the finances of the son of a Scot and a Jew. (That would be Duchovny, whose mother is from Scotland and whose father is an American Jew.) Well, the thread went ballistic. I was labelled anti-Semite (natch), offensive, insensitive... The works. Despite the fact that:
The gist of the reaction was I should have just let this comment of Duchovny's slide down the memory hole, since the mere action of repeating it could cause offense. The underlying theme seemed to be that by quoting someone you are therefore and always espousing the beliefs revealed in the quote. Bizarre, to say the least. In any case, for some reason I lost interest in participating in the forum -- oh, let's be blunt, I don't talk to people who can't think, it's a waste of my time. By the way, no one came to the defense of the poor Scots I offended, so I guess we can let fly at drunken, angry, penny-pinching Scots as much as we like.
PS: Easterbrook was wrong about his assertion that Jews should be against depictions of violence in the movies because of what happened to them in the Holocaust. If you ask me some violence on the Tarantino scale would have kept lots of Jews off those trains. Is he really suggesting that Jews should be pacifists? Yeah, that will impress their enemies.
Update: "Monsters from the Id!" Heh.
More: here's some more cogent commentary from E. Nough.
Add me to this list as well. Why? Well for one thing, this is how it will read to the ROTW: "Hello. We've invaded your country, dropped bombs on it, killed lots of you, and we would now like you to pay for all the damages." I'm no advocate of the "we need to make the world like us" nonsense, but this is ridiculous. All that will happen is that the debt will never be completely repaid, it will cripple Iraq's economy, and we'll end up having to endure yet another Jubilee "Drop the Debt" campaign by aging rock stars. Do these fucks in the Senate want things to change for the better in the world or don't they?
In the meantime, there's been all sorts of fun in Bolivia. Miguel, who blogs from that country, points out something that members of the tear-it-all-down school of thought tend to glide past:
The saddest thing's that this will only affect the poor, not the rich. At worst, people in the Sona Zur are going w/o their café or ice cream (although we still went out for ice cream in San Miguel last night). We have plenty of food; we're essentially safe w/ our well-stocked fridges. But the people in El Alto, who live day-to-day, are suffering from the protests. The pressure's all on them, not on the sureños.
Ian Wood has an important question. I don't know why people glom onto disaster porn (which is what I call the endless feast of doom-'n'-gloom news reporting coupled with all those true crime shows) myself. I can't stand watching the news anymore; it's all about the reporters -- the actual events and the people they are reporting about are just props. And don't even get me started about "reality tv."
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By the way: to my trolls who seem to think that they are making some sort of cogent point by droning on and on about the "hypocrisy" of the US going after one dictator while leaving others unbothered (which the trolls call "supporting" them) -- I will expect then that when this or some future administration decides, for whatever reason, to go after the next thug nation's psycho regime, that you will wholeheartedly support this action. After all, it's what you want us to do, isn't it?
Oh, it's not?
So what do you want us to do, exactly? (This is a purely rhetorical question, of course -- I am sure the answer is something similar to that answer the alien gave to the president in Independence Day when he asked that very same question. For my foreign trolls, the defeat and destruction of America would please them because they imagine that it would somehow enrich their own native land -- it wouldn't, but they aren't smart enough to figure out. For my American trolls, the defeat and destruction of America would give them a chance to live a real-life version of Fight Club, which they imagine would be neato-keano... Of course what they don't seem to realize is there is only one Helena Bonham-Carter, and she won't be available after the apocalypse.)
You know, about this whole CIA-Lady-Bush-administration-scandal-leak-blah-blah, I have just this to say:
What the hell kind of name is Plame, anyway? I mean, what the fuck*, "Plame"? Where did the boat that carried that name into the world come from? Is it German (derived from the name of the von Plämmensingenstrassenecken family that had to flee their ancient fiefdom of Höhenblücherdienstagmittwochstein in the seventeenth century due to a falling out between the morganatic Duke of Upper Farvergknucklesandwich and Count Otto of Bad Medizin)? Or English? ("There's always been a Plame to carry on the family name in our village on the Thames!") Or did some clerk at immigration come in late with a hangover, see the collection of c's, z's, and other letters God Almighty meant to be separated by vowels and say: "Fuck* it, you're Mr. Plame from now on" to the hapless Czech immigrant standing meekly before him.
Plame. It's not a name -- it's a typo.
*Copyright 2003 Andrew Northrup, aka "The Poorman" ("now with twenty percent more 'fuck'!")
Reason number 789,451 why I will never, ever work for a newspaper, magazine, or any other kind of professional media: I'd have to deal with pissant editors looking for new ways to get a power-jones. The fact that some pub's house blogger will now have his entries be combed over by the nanny board, who will sift out anything "controversial" that might cause some twit the vapors comes as an apparent shock to Glenn Reynolds and others, but I'm not surprised. There's a reason I bought the Sunday edition of the Orlando Sentinel and tossed everything but the ads and the travel section, and it's not because of all the Visit Disney! propaganda either.
Here's another idea that antiwar groups have been putting forth as a reason to be against the Bush administration's handling of the terrorist threat: the idea that their actions re Iraq and elsewhere have caused us to "lose the friendship of the rest of the world." Friendship? What friendship would that be?
But these sentiments have long prevailed in Jordan, Egypt, and France. During the 1990s, no one said good things about the United States in Egypt. It was then that the Islamist children of Egypt took to the road, to Hamburg and Kandahar, to hatch a horrific conspiracy against the United States. And it was in the 1990s, during the fabled stock market run, when the prophets of globalization preached the triumph of the U.S. economic model over the protected versions of the market in places such as France, when anti-Americanism became the uncontested ideology of French public life. Americans were barbarous, a threat to French cuisine and their beloved language. U.S. pension funds were acquiring their assets and Wall Street speculators were raiding their savings. The United States incarcerated far too many people and executed too many criminals. All these views thrived during a decade when Americans are now told they were loved and uncontested on foreign shores.
Face it, puppies: the ROTW was never America's "friend" -- for one thing, that word is meaningless in international relations. And we were never universally loved before September 11th either. What we were, perhaps, was ignorant and/or in denial of the depths to which much of the world had sunk into envy and hatred regarding the USA.
If Americans have one overriding flaw, it is this puppy-doggish need to be liked. Our national lack of self-esteem is one of the few American products that people in most other countries, especially what I call the Thug World Nations, have not snatched up. On the contrary, I think that you will find that one thing our enemies do have is plenty of self-esteem -- they lack esteem for others. (This is another unpleasant truth that many peacniks don't want to face -- the idea that their Dear Victims of American Hegemony should actually possess monstrous, Hollywood celebrity-sized egos. But that is for another rant.) And the citizens of most other countries outside the so-called "Anglosphere" seem to also lack that need to be loved by the rest of the world. They think, in time-honored tribal tradition, that wanting to be loved by a bunch of foreigners is a puzzling, if not perverted, desire. (The fact that American patriotism pales in comparison to the excessive nationalism of other nations is also for another rant.)
If being conservative means being this ridiculous, count me out. Michele has apparently been relieved of her VRWC membership, and isn't the least bit sorry.
For the record, I believe that the government's duties should be confined to: the upkeep of the roads, the defense of the country (which yes, often means giving the enemy, whoever he might be, an ass-kicking on his own soil if necessary), and to provide for the weak and helpless in order that they may become strong and productive. I have always been told I was a conservative because I didn't think any of these measures could be forced to include paying for a bad artist's bad art, or Penile Implants for Hermaphrodite Wannabes, or what-have-you. I didn't think that the very idea of providing a piece of meat, a slice of fruit, and a roll to some poor kid was the slippery slope to Communist Doom. But what do I know. Let's just keep on paying for that War on (Some) Drugs, try not to pay any attention to that gun-control regulation quietly breeding under the fridge, and keep the budget to name every footpath and birdcage in West Virginia after Senator Robert ("Grand Wizard") Byrd full! That's not a waste of money -- that has entertainment value. And you can get a good deal at the auction on BMWs snatched up by the RICO act. In the meantime, I hear the uranium mines need small workers; hey, single ma, we've found a way to make your kid pay for those lunches!
And speaking of blinders, the New York Times continues to act as if Arab terrorists give a shit about Westerners killing other Westerners:
Death came from the skies. A building — a symbol of the nation — collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
(Via The Daily James.)
One of the many reasons I mostly don't bother with the so-called professional media any more -- I don't watch teevee news, I don't watch teevee crap like Survivor and Stupid Shrill Boring People Feed Each Other to Cannibals Island, I have even quit listening to the local rock station in the car since it became an All-Nickelback-All-Day station:
With the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only three weeks away, TV networks have planned nearly no special programming to commemorate the horrible events of that day.
Rachel Lucas is pissed, as well she might be. I remember the Our Di Died 24/7 coverage, the endless footage of the pile of sodden teddy bears in front of Buckingham Palace, the crowds of assholes demanding that the Queen get down in the slog with them and cry like the fucking babies they were... And don't even get me started on the Laci Peterson thing. See, when it comes to a dead celeb, or a gruesome murder of someone these journos don't know, then it's meal ticket time. "We won't have to think up a story for weeks! Years, maybe!" But let something happen that makes the media mavens themselves remember they are human (and thus can be killed), then suddenly they pull out the "We think it's time for some closure" shtick. Fucking swellheads.
Then again, as Rachel says:
And you know, that's fine. Their version wouldn't be right, anyway. They'd edit and splice. They'd add moving music and make montages of moving moments. They'd do voiceovers and talk about all manner of ancillary facts that didn't really matter on that day. Blah, blah, blah, they'd do their "thing" and the end result would be a Hallmark card. No thanks, I think I prefer my own unedited tapes.
So maybe it's a good thing. But they are still a bunch of fucking swellheads. Me, I think I'll commemorate the anniversary by buying 9/11. (I have it on video but it was from really crappy antenna reception. I didn't have cable when it was aired.)
David Janes had the same thought that I did about this report by "researchers" on what supposedly defines a political conservative. As he says, the thing basically states that conservatism is a mental disorder.
The point is to lay the groundwork so "conservatives" can be forced into treatment to "cure" their mental condition.
Then he links to an article on how the Chinese are sending dissidents to mental hospitals, which is not exactly a new practice in any communist country. So leftist academics are dreaming of the day they can load up people like William F. Buckley into a padded truck, what a surprise.
That being said, let's take a brief look at the list of "symptoms" these learned beings came up with. [JEFF FOXWORTHY VOICE] You might be a conservative [/JEFF FOXWORTHY VOICE] if you have these 'psychological factors':
Okay. John Collins already did a lengthy examination of these points. I haven't much to add to his rundown, and I am having trouble thinking of words at this hour anyway. But I am afraid that I must inform the learned minds that came up with this crap that "fear and aggression" is not unique to conservatives, but a main component of human nature (and if you don't believe me just go up to your nearest peace moron and ask them what they think of George W. Bush); "dogmatism" and "intolerance of ambiguity" are two different things and should each have a line of their own; "uncertainty avoidance" is -- how can I say this -- normal, as well as being another standard component of that icky, unchanging human nature thing; as is the "need for cognitive closure" (are these people seriously saying that there is something wrong with this?); and I am not sure what "terror management" is supposed to be -- if they are talking about the current political and military situation, that is not a "psychological event," but if they are talking about controlling one's own response to one's fears, they seem to be saying that there is something wrong with that. Fine. You guys stay with the hysterics. I'll hang out here with the people who can control themselves.
Well, I've been pretty occupied with moving, and today was the rent-the-Uhaul-and-cart-the-heavy-stuff-to-storage day. I'm so tired I can barely type. I haven't even had a chance to answer my email or check on any of the comment threads or anything. And I missed the chance to enjoy the deaths of Uday and Qusay, the Psychotic Duo. I also got to miss the apparent fact that many antiwar folks, anti-Bush fellows, or just plain antis are actually a bit down in the dumps about the demise of these two. (Just look around the blogs. I'm too tired to link.) Incredible. What, did Uday owe you guys money or something? Was Qusay really that much of an asset to the world? Don't they even deserve the sneering sendoff that Strom Thurmond got? I mean gee, Thurmond was no angel, that much is true, but AFAIK he never fed anyone alive into an industrial plastic shredder and sat around to watch and enjoy the screams. Whatever.
Anyway, tomorrow I lay waste to the comments and make war upon the blogospherical thingy! Or maybe not. Gotta keep you lot on your toes. Oh --- one last thing. I am going to announce it here, in case he reads my index page: to Mike at Mindpring.com, please stop posting comments here for a while unless you can say something about events that happened in, say, the last three months. I refuse to let my blog get bogged down in a comment hamster wheel of "Bush stole the election/lied about connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda/we shouldn't have gone to war" obsession. The volume of your comments indicates that you have plenty of free time to start a blog of your own, and much to say with it. While it was fun at first to review recent history with you it looks as if you are taking the discussion here off its rails because, obviously, you remain pissed at the many things you have no control over, as well as frustrated that you can't seem to get anyone to agree with you. I'm not going to ban you or anything like that; I'm going to try asking nicely. Drop it. I have said everything I want to say, and everything on the subjects under discussion have been done to death over the past twenty or so months. I am getting bored, and I have limited server space. If you and someone else still feels the need to bicker over these issues, there is this thing called email.
This site is not a public service; it is my personal blog where I express my thoughts and work out my issues and comment on things. I could password protect it quite easily, or shut off comments. However, I do like feedback from people, so I have left the site open and comments on. I don't mind a little bit of snark, but I do object to being harangued. This site is not a message board, and it is certainly not a free-for-all. I control this website; if you don't like it, there are many, many free blogging services out there. You can set up your own site and say whatever you want.
And please, no more pathetic comments on how I "don't like being disagreed with" or how I want to quell your free speech rights. I don't mind being disagreed with, I mind being hectored and abused because what I wrote does not meet with someone else's standard of approval. A bit of raillery is one thing, but people who pull out the above wet towel defenses I tend to dismiss as sad cases not worth my time.
I have just had an evil thought. While in an argument with a troll in this post, I mentioned that the shriekers in the press and in antiwar groups and so on used as one of their antiwar arguments the idea that Saddam Hussein would loose his WMDs at the coalition forces and the result would be millions of soldiers killed by nukes and poisonous gas and anthrax and, I don't know, armies of undead zombies and such. Well, as we all know this didn't happen, and so far it seems that it will not happen, either because Saddam's WMD capabilities were overestimated (which I am certainly willing to believe, considering what an egotistical blowhard he was, and how difficult it is to get clear intelligence out of that area) or the remaining loyalist forces can't get their hands on wherever these things have been stashed.
The evil thought I had was this: of all the people who seemed most to believe in the Imminent Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction coming from Iraq, it seemed to be the antiwar groups (leftwing, rightwing, and wingnut) who were the most fervent in their fear -- well, their stated fear -- that these horrors would be unleashed upon the world due to the rash actions of the United States. All of the war supporters I have read all were of the opinion that the Iraqi forces would prove to be more bark than bite, though there was the chance that WMDs could be used. Guess who turned out to be right? So I think that the antiwar forces are miffed at the lack of the piles of corpses on our side. I think that they are pissed that they were so gullible -- they are the ones who sucked down the government's spin on the "imminent threat" (or misunderstood just what the administration meant by "imminent threat" -- I doubt they thought it meant that Saddam had nukes primed and ready to fire at Washington). So they are snarling and snapping now about the WMDs and the "sixteen words" and waving around the corpses of soldiers killed in "guerilla war" and shoving reports of grumpy soldiers (as if the normal state of military personnel is some sort of happy Disneyland in fatigues) and stuff like that because they can't stand how they have consistently been proved wrong.
Oh isn't this special. Suddenly the UN is all for the US sending troops to a foreign country -- Liberia. Let's see, the UN so far has thrown pissy-faced and stampy-footed tantrums over the battles we have fought so far. They not only didn't shut up when we were both successful and brought the battles in "under budget" (ie, with much less time spent and loss of life than expected), they and their lackeys in the press continued to fume and fuss at us for every smashed pot and discomfitted ex-Baathist who now has to clean toilets for a living. Now suddenly Kofi Annan is proclaiming that we just have to send troops to poor, beleaguered Liberia; this (proposed) battle gets their seal of approval. Can you smell something traplike, children? I sure can. Normally I am all for us going to some cracked up place and setting it straight, but this time my instincts say: "Run away! Run away!"
(Via Steven Den Beste.)
A Tale of Two Speeches...
There has been a lot of fuss over two speeches in the past few days. One fuss, unfavorable, has been over Bush's pre-Iraq-invasion speech with the famous "Sixteen Words" (aka, the "Bush Liiieeddddd!!!™ speech). The other fuss, generally favorable, has been over "Our Tony" Blair's recent speech, with the oft-quoted pro-liberty, pro-democracy passage. Now I am not going to say anything either pro or con about the content or intended audience of either speech.* I'd just like to focus on the notion that admirers of the second and detractors of the first seem to share: the idea that political decisions still hinge in any sgnificant way on a politician's formal oration about it. (I am not including debate on an issue in this category; that's a different thing.)
I can only speak for myself, but I have never had my mind made up on any issue, easy or difficult, by hearing some pol give a speech about it. These days, by the time a pol has given a speech about something -- unless he is running for office -- it is either to summarize or explain a process that has already been set in motion (the Bush speech) or to summarize and declaim on some event that has already occurred (the Blair speech). People who are in a frenzy over Bush's speech and the so-called "lie" (which by the way anyone with the discernment abilities of a reasonably bright elementary school student could tell is merely a statement of acceptance of someone's -- in this case, British intelligence's -- report, but let's leave that aside for now) are acting as if the decision to go to war on Iraq had not already been made months before that speech. Mes amis, I must inform you that speech or no speech we were off to war.
The paeans and hosannas across Blogville for Tony Blair's speech are a tribute, perhaps, to his rhetorical gifts. I did catch a few minutes of his speech on C-Span and it did sound quite good, but I have little attention span for such things. (Besides, there is always a blog somewhere where I can get the rundown on whatever it was I was too lazy to watch.) But I don't see that his words made a difference one way or the other, except, of course, to give some of us pleasure and reassure us that he is, at least in the War on Terror endeavor, on "our side." Perhaps at least he recognizes that it's Britain's neck on the line as well as America's. But anyway, he is otherwise by all reports a socialist who is slowly leading the UK into the clutches of some semi-totalitarian future state, so I am not as ready to join the Tony Blair fan club as are some other people.
In any case, the anti-Bush, anti-war contingent should be horrified and the pro-Bush, hawkish club should be reassured at what the future probably holds. At this point we are in too deep to backtrack now. Even if it so happens that the economy tanks even further and the mopping-up in Iraq turns into some sort of Quagmire™ and Bush doesn't get elected for a second term, whatever Democrat candidate gets into office will be met with the same unpleasant reality that clonked Bush over the head: once terrorists from a foreign country kill thousands of your own citizens in your own country, there is no way you can go back to appeasing them with "just enough" carrots (in the form of aid and diplomatic tricks) to keep them out of your hair. For decades the West tried to pretend that the Middle East was a) not there, or b) not so bad as all that. They were wrong. Now we are in it for the long haul. A Democrat in the White House won't change a thing.
*Update: well, not much anyway.
Up-freakin'-date 2: Jebus, I can't win for losing. I thought I was pretty impartial in my bashing of the left and right sides when it came to their current pet issues. But I might as well have filled an entire post with "Noam sux, Bush rox!" written five hundred times. (Read my very first commenter to see what I mean.)
I have very little to say about the Bush Liiieeedddd!!!™ pseudo-controversy. For one thing, I don't care. For another thing, other people have already said plenty. So far I like Steve H.'s take the best.
I'm trying to wake up here. (It takes about a pot of coffee.) Then I must commence shredding -- uh, I mean packing. In the meantime, read Dipnut. He's pissed at Time magazine (the second item down the page) and some blog creature called Billmon. And, after reading his pieces, so am I. (By the way, unless you feel like discovering a whole new reason to hate humanity, don't go to Billmon's site and read his commenters. Man, what a collection of pissants, sourballs, and near-sociopaths. It's not a question of nothing being sacred to these people; it's the fact that they don't seem to think that there is anything that is deserving of even a modicum of respect. Whatever.)
Anyway, my synopsis of what Dipnut has uncovered is: the press in the UK and in the US (at least in Time and in the British publication he links to) are trying their best to transform the current situation into a repeat of the Vietnam War, when America was an evil fuckup, soldiers were considered to be pathetic psychopaths, and the journalist was king.
Guess who is proposing to trash a historic neighborhood in order to build a toxic-emission-emitting complex in Providence? Big Tobacco? Dow Chemical? Halliburton? Some other Eville Capitalist Entity? No: Brown University.
Here is more.
Wow. Remember when you could get into deep doo-doo for suggesting that black people be segregated off into specialized areas, such as "their music" and "their dancing"? Well, I sure do. But it looks as if the New York Times forgot. Oh well -- how can we expect them to remember such things? We all know that it is impossible for racism to exist north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Here's an interesting post on sadistic "artists" doing things that would get an ordinary "non-artist" person arrested or beaten up. I have nothing to add to it; it's too well-written. (I don't know, though, that "misanthropes" is really a proper designation for these people, since they need to have other human beings to do their dirty work on. A true misanthrope wouldn't be able to stand the presence of another human being long enough to torture him.)
(Via Dean Esmay.)
Okay, goddammit. I have had it up to hear with this "bright" crap. Note to Dean: I hereby proclaim that the theme to your continued poking and prodding at this particular monkey cage will be the old Smiths song, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore." It's just irritating me now; you wanted to know, so now I'm telling you. And unlike Pejman I am not even interested in the non-believers' rudeness to believers aspect to this matter. As for Max Power, I don't know why he has such a bug up his ass about Pejman's argument, and at this point I don't care. (I do find it funny that he would get all bent out of shape about other people getting bent out of shape on something.)
Here is my absolute last word on the subject: I don't care about the fragile souls of uni-coddled academics who are afraid of scary religious people, or whatever their damage is. I don't particularly care about the hurt feelings of believers either: it is my observation that the world is rather hard on peoples' ideas about life, the universe, and everything. It would be nice if it were otherwise, but it isn't; that's just the way it is. Deal.
But I do care about the English language, what is left of it anyway. But don't listen to me (obviously nothing I say penetrates anyway); listen to C.S. Lewis. Here's what he had to say about this sort of thing, in the preface to Mere Christianity:
The word gentleman originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone "a gentleman" you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact[...] But then there came people who said -- so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully -- "Ah, but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? "[...] They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. [...] When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object.And so on -- you can read the entire passage here.
See, we don't need to take a perfectly good word -- "bright" -- which already has several different meanings attached to it, and give it yet another meaning. Especially when we already have plenty of perfectly useful words for the thing the "bright" advocates want to describe -- atheist, agnostic, naturalist, secular humanist, humanist, and so on. New terminology won't change the fact that some people are unfavorably disposed towards these words, because it is the ideas behind those words that they object to, not the words themselves. No fulminating Bible-thumper is going to change his mind about atheists being Godless sinners if atheists start calling themselves something else. No fanatical Muslim is going to sing songs of praise for secular humanists if they start calling themselves "cigars" or "Molly" instead. The Brighters are going to be sneered at by a certain segment of the population no matter what they do, and the cutesy smugness of their stance certainly is adding people to that number.
(My previous posts on the subject are here and here.) And before you comment, yes, I know that there are no line breaks; those posts were done in Textile formatting, and I have to reinstall it.)
Update: okay, the last last last last word.
Wow, that's some set of cojones the British Parliament has. They are planning to make everyone in the UK carry a "universal ID card." But that's not what stands out to me (the fact that Britain is inching towards Big Brotherism is old news now); what I can't believe is that they are going to make everyone pay for it:
The ID card will be required by everyone over 16 -- more than 40 million people -- and cost around £40, though with concessions for the elderly and the poor.Can you imagine the outcry in the US if the government decided to charge everyone for their social security card? (It's free here. And yes, I know that "free" in the context of a government service means "paid for by taxes," but at least we don't have to fork over another US$65.00, which is about what £40.00 is according to the current exchange rate.)
(Via Kim du Toit.)
Chuck Simmins and Kathy Kinsley comment on recent protests against feeding the starving. Actually, the protests are against using "genetically manipulated" crops and other modern farming techniques in third world countries (that is, feeding the starving). In other words: let them eat cake made with wheat grown the good, old-fashioned "organic" way; that is, the way that isn't working anymore in much of Africa and other third world countries -- the ways we abandoned here in the West centuries ago, except for a minority of granola-heads.
I have a simple test of judging organically-grown produce vs. produce grown using those horrid "modern" methods that are supposed to turn the human race into mutant three-eyed monsters or something. (Which, however, live to be ninety-five years old and die fat and rich, but who cares about that when you have an icky third eye in the middle of your forehead! Actually, I think it would be cool to have a third eye in the middle of my forehead. The two I already have don't work that well.)
Anyway, the test is this: I go to the produce section and look at the organic vegetables. Then I look at the Eville Mutation-Inducing vegetables. I observe that the Eville Mutation-Inducing vegetables are larger, more colorful, and less-blemished than their good, old-fashioned naturally-fertilized counterparts. I buy the Eville Mutation-Inducing veggies (which are also about two-thirds cheaper than the organic stuff), take them home, eat them. And yes, I have tasted both versions of veggies and I have been unable to discern any taste difference.
So, we shouldn't foist our Eville Mutation-Inducing agricultural techniques and seed crops, ones we have used to make us into the most overfed nation on earth, onto the poor, starving third-worlders, because European Union agribusinesses will suffer we can't let Uncle Sam do anything that makes it look good who needs so many black and brown people anyway? It's population control It makes granola-munching hippies, who shit fifteen times a day due to their fiber-intensive "healthy" diets, feel better if people everywhere are as miserable as they are it might benefit the companies that manufacture and sell these techniques and crops. We can't feed starving people if there is a chance that someone somewhere might make a profit off it the act. A corporation that makes a profit is more evil than mass starvation. Have I got that right?
JESUS H. CHRIST. What the fucking hell, people? Getting someone fired? Over something so stupid?
I. Am. So. Pissed. Right. Now.
Supposedly the great civil liberties struggles are behind us. So what exactly is going on? Is this righting old wrongs, or plain old revenge? How about this? And will this help people to stop judging others by the color of their skin?
("Whites are icky Studies" link via Kim Du Toit. When School Officials Attack! link via the