What the hell does anyone else matter to me? Like I should care. I only care about myself. I linger at every mirror I see. But I should have an audience, so I suppose people matter at least a little.
Take that fella I know, with all the extra weight. An extra person-worth of weight. Why is that? I caught part of a show on cable, TLC, called Big Medicine. Seems to be a regular series. About very very fat people and their struggle. No sarcasm. It is a struggle. Obviously. Why? What is it about them that force-feeds themselves into obesity? Guilt, shame, self-loathing -- just abstract words and pop psychology. Everyone knows it, because everyone has issues. Most issues don’t show up so obviously. But only a little self-examination makes every insight into this problem a cliché. People get fat because they eat more than they burn. They get very fat because of something emotional.
I don’t know what to do about emotions. I do know what to do about reality. Change the behavior. Change the conditions. Then things will be different.
So this fella is a bright guy. I have no real insights for him. He’s given his circumstances much more thought than I have, even if only fleetingly, mostly. But health is one of my things, and part of health is diet. Probably the biggest part. So let’s look at the matter.
The big excuse to eat is hunger. It’s not really hunger, but it’s called that. A briefly-empty stomach. Real hunger of course is a craving not for calories but for nutrients. Like real thirst isn’t about coffee. But it’s all so emotional, and that means that hunger is job one. So we’ll pretend that identifying emotional hunger with real hunger is a profound revelation that I just received from God. My goodness, I’m wise. And the way God talks to me, I must also be very holy indeed.
So off the top of my head I see three issues. Calories, satiation, and the glycemic index. No matter what the theory is about obesity, a basic perusal of the laws of thermodynamics will convince us that every weight problem comes down to calories. The conservation of mass/energy. It will either be used, or stored. What we know is that it will not simply disappear. If you take in more calories than you use, the remainder will be stored as fat -- ignoring of course destructive instances such as diabetes or tumors. If you take in fewer calories than you use, you’ll burn fat. Are you following me? I know this is really advanced stuff.
Upshot: how do we deal with reducing the intake of excessive calories? Well, from a behavioral -- that is, from an effective -- perspective, we reduce hunger by ignoring it, which is a bootstraps solution, or by feeding it with intelligent alternatives to the idiot choices that have previously ruined our lives. So, filling up with foods that are actually good for us. Bulky, nutrient-dense and calorie-poor foods. You know, like, uh, vegetables. Broccoli and cauliflower and the like. Get it? Stupid?
These things are sort of bland for your oh-so-discerning palate, so use spices. Not sauces, genius -- spices, and garnishes, and flavor enhancers like garlic and ginger and pepper and herbs and suchlike. Lord, do I have to do all your thinking? And yes, go ahead and splash a bit of olive oil onto it. Just remember that you're on a budget. The body is an economy, and you are not a Communist: there are rules and limits that conform to reality, rather than to some insane theory under which you have previously been deluding yourself.
Part of this filling-up process is about satiation. Some foods are more satisfying than others. Raw fruits score very high on the satiation scale. Boiled potatoes. Lean meats. So there may be a place for these, in some meals. Same with oils. Do the math. Do a google search. Do something.
And then there’s the glycemic index. It’s just a way of calculating how fast food gets digested and enters the bloodstream, where it will turn into fat, if it enters at a fast rate, or into energy if at a slow rate. Like an IV drip. Low GI is good. High GI, up to 100, is bad. Buy yourself a little book, and treat anything over 33, or 40, or 50, or whatever your compromise point is, as a special treat. Ask yourself, and answer honestly, if you must have potato chips to be happy, and how often. If you must have them, have them. On a budget. In moderation. Or ice cream or bagels or rice or meat or whatever it is that’s made you so fat. Because it was not nutritious food that did the damage.
How about making some livable rules for yourself? How about planning out your meals -- not whatever BS you’ve already been doing, that hasn’t worked. This time, serious. I don’t know what your heroin is. You do. Identify it, and replace it with something that’s not poisonous to you. Did you know a pound of cherries has about 200 calories? Did you know that cherries have a glycemic value of 22 -- that is VERY GOOD!!! Did you know a pound of strawberries has fewer than 120 calories? Did you know that strawberries have a glycemic value of 32 -- which is also Very Good, but not as good as cherries, which are 22, which is ten less than strawberries, but still is very good. Good things are good.
See how that works? So what that means, junior, is that you could eat, say, big bowls of these delightfully tasty and wholesome foods, which have very few calories and a superb effect on energy, every few hours all day long, and still eat only half of your usual daily calorie intake. Well, when I say “your” usual intake, I mean a normal person.
Look. Just get started. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about getting serious. It’s about having a system, a philosophy, a paradigm that is generally correct, or at least yields some positive-seeming results, even if it’s wrong. Like Mormonism.
Cuz you’re going to die early and in pain if you don’t get a handle on your out-of-control behaviors. Does no one love you, that this would be okay? Having doctors remove a whole lot of extra skin is less bad than most of the alternatives. Maybe you could donate it to a burn victim. But exercise isn’t doing the job. And you just sit around most of the time anyway. Exercising your ass? Try exercising your muscles. Mostly your heart, and hardly at all your jaw.
I, of course, can eat anything I want.
J
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Zombies and Fairy Tales
Someone asked me the other day who would I vote for if it came down to that -- Hillary or Obama. I didn’t even pause in answering. Hillary. Hm. How odd. Hillary, who is so disliked, over Obama, who is so charming and pleasant. How can such a thing be explained?
Isn’t it strange, though, such a karmic conflation, these clintons with Nixon. Hillary, who worked so industriously in the Nixon impeachment, and bill, who was actually impeached. bill, who had such a sleazy, such a shoddy character, counterpart to Nixon’s demon-haunted psyche. Hillary, who in her famously vindictive nature is such a complement to Nixon with his storied enemies list. How, in what way, could we possibly want even the possibility of a reprise of all that? clinton alone was precisely half the man Nixon was. If Hillary gets in, the resurrection would be complete -- if more zombie than holy.
How could such a thing be better than Obama? Because for all his appeal, Obama would be a disaster. America has never had a leftist president. Not left is we understand the term. We’ve had liberals in a moderate sense -- FDR, Johnson, Carter. But they weren’t ideologues. The real liberals, like McGovern and Mondale and Dukakis and Gore and Kerry -- never got elected. There’s a reason for that. Yes, providence -- but also because America is not the place for such leftists. Europe, of course, loves massive government. Russia. China. Leftist paradises. But the USA? Not yet. That’s Obama. The most liberal politician in the Senate.
Well, I'm wrong about Carter. Worst president ever. He must have been a liberal in the immoderate sense.
But we survived. As we will survive. Checks and balances. The Democrat-controlled Congress has not yet ruined the country. We can survive a few years in the wilderness. The problem with Obama is his inexperience. His naiveté. Can you imagine him sitting down at a negotiation table with Hugo Chavez? Good lord. Obama was a civil rights attorney. Yes, we do need civil rights attorneys. A few of them, because civil rights do need to be protected. Um, I shouldn’t have said “civil rights attorneys.” I should have said constitutional law attorneys. You know, based in reality, rather than leftist propaganda.
How liberal is Obama? While he was in the Illinois legislature, a bill came up to provide medical aid to babies who survived abortion. You know, actual babies, just maybe sort of cut up. Obama voted against the bill. Let them die, I guess. Very, very, very liberal. I don’t hold it against him. It’s just emblematic. And as Hillary so shrilly pointed out, Obama holds the record for Senate votes of abstain, or merely present. Not real strong on taking a clear position, huh? This may make him a nice guy, but not much of a leader.
As for his oratory, if you analyze it, he says exactly nothing. No real plans, no concrete propositions -- just high-flown rhetoric. Universal health care and mortgage-crisis relief. Doesn’t that sound nice? But how will it be paid for, with this oh-so-out-of-control budget already causing so many problems? He’s not wrong to be so vague -- his plans would be used against him in the general election. It’s a tactic, his vagueness. But it also seems to be a character trait. Is it a sort of middle-child thing? -- the mediator and conciliator? Manifesting in him through his genetic middle ground between two races? Nonsense, of course. Because he isn’t moderate in his positions. He’s an extreme liberal.
Government is not the answer. It isn’t the problem, either, pace Reagan. It is a tool, to be used or misused according to who wields it. As James Barber says in his The Presidential Character, “government is no church. Democracy is a system, a set of conditions, a down-to-earth skeleton put together to host and foster baseline virtues such as justice, freedom, equality, community, and participation, rather than topline virtues such as faith, hope and charity. So who ought to be picked for the Presidency is a concern we ought to think about not in the context of moral perfection but in the context of basic political leadership in the reality of democracy.”
Conservatives should know this, having, as so many of them do, an actual church, that they need not look to government for salvation. Government is a necessary evil, designed to inhibit unnecessary evils such as crime, and to undo inevitable evils, such as floods. Of these two, Hillary or Obama, which would be the less ineffective in dealing with such issues? I’d chose Nixonian vindictiveness over Carteresque fecklessness every time.
Hopefully it won’t come to that. McCain can beat Hillary because Hillary will get out the hate vote against her. He can beat Obama because Hispanics and Asians, historically, do not vote for a black man. Don’t ask me. Blacks will show up in record numbers, but moderates and independents will go for McCain, and when conservatives find out the specifics of how very very left Obama actually is, they’ll hold their noses and vote for McCain.
So? It’s a good thing. We win. We win by not losing.
J
Isn’t it strange, though, such a karmic conflation, these clintons with Nixon. Hillary, who worked so industriously in the Nixon impeachment, and bill, who was actually impeached. bill, who had such a sleazy, such a shoddy character, counterpart to Nixon’s demon-haunted psyche. Hillary, who in her famously vindictive nature is such a complement to Nixon with his storied enemies list. How, in what way, could we possibly want even the possibility of a reprise of all that? clinton alone was precisely half the man Nixon was. If Hillary gets in, the resurrection would be complete -- if more zombie than holy.
How could such a thing be better than Obama? Because for all his appeal, Obama would be a disaster. America has never had a leftist president. Not left is we understand the term. We’ve had liberals in a moderate sense -- FDR, Johnson, Carter. But they weren’t ideologues. The real liberals, like McGovern and Mondale and Dukakis and Gore and Kerry -- never got elected. There’s a reason for that. Yes, providence -- but also because America is not the place for such leftists. Europe, of course, loves massive government. Russia. China. Leftist paradises. But the USA? Not yet. That’s Obama. The most liberal politician in the Senate.
Well, I'm wrong about Carter. Worst president ever. He must have been a liberal in the immoderate sense.
But we survived. As we will survive. Checks and balances. The Democrat-controlled Congress has not yet ruined the country. We can survive a few years in the wilderness. The problem with Obama is his inexperience. His naiveté. Can you imagine him sitting down at a negotiation table with Hugo Chavez? Good lord. Obama was a civil rights attorney. Yes, we do need civil rights attorneys. A few of them, because civil rights do need to be protected. Um, I shouldn’t have said “civil rights attorneys.” I should have said constitutional law attorneys. You know, based in reality, rather than leftist propaganda.
How liberal is Obama? While he was in the Illinois legislature, a bill came up to provide medical aid to babies who survived abortion. You know, actual babies, just maybe sort of cut up. Obama voted against the bill. Let them die, I guess. Very, very, very liberal. I don’t hold it against him. It’s just emblematic. And as Hillary so shrilly pointed out, Obama holds the record for Senate votes of abstain, or merely present. Not real strong on taking a clear position, huh? This may make him a nice guy, but not much of a leader.
As for his oratory, if you analyze it, he says exactly nothing. No real plans, no concrete propositions -- just high-flown rhetoric. Universal health care and mortgage-crisis relief. Doesn’t that sound nice? But how will it be paid for, with this oh-so-out-of-control budget already causing so many problems? He’s not wrong to be so vague -- his plans would be used against him in the general election. It’s a tactic, his vagueness. But it also seems to be a character trait. Is it a sort of middle-child thing? -- the mediator and conciliator? Manifesting in him through his genetic middle ground between two races? Nonsense, of course. Because he isn’t moderate in his positions. He’s an extreme liberal.
Government is not the answer. It isn’t the problem, either, pace Reagan. It is a tool, to be used or misused according to who wields it. As James Barber says in his The Presidential Character, “government is no church. Democracy is a system, a set of conditions, a down-to-earth skeleton put together to host and foster baseline virtues such as justice, freedom, equality, community, and participation, rather than topline virtues such as faith, hope and charity. So who ought to be picked for the Presidency is a concern we ought to think about not in the context of moral perfection but in the context of basic political leadership in the reality of democracy.”
Conservatives should know this, having, as so many of them do, an actual church, that they need not look to government for salvation. Government is a necessary evil, designed to inhibit unnecessary evils such as crime, and to undo inevitable evils, such as floods. Of these two, Hillary or Obama, which would be the less ineffective in dealing with such issues? I’d chose Nixonian vindictiveness over Carteresque fecklessness every time.
Hopefully it won’t come to that. McCain can beat Hillary because Hillary will get out the hate vote against her. He can beat Obama because Hispanics and Asians, historically, do not vote for a black man. Don’t ask me. Blacks will show up in record numbers, but moderates and independents will go for McCain, and when conservatives find out the specifics of how very very left Obama actually is, they’ll hold their noses and vote for McCain.
So? It’s a good thing. We win. We win by not losing.
J
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Ma Jolie
I’ve carried the terrible secret for years. Finally I’ve found the courage to tell it. Perhaps it’s not courage. Maybe I’m just too tired to bear the burden alone. I just know I can’t go on like this anymore. And now that he's come back into my life, in a way, it's unbearable.
It happened more than 25 years ago. I was driving cross country on some business -- the details hardly matter. Outside Collinsville, Illinois I picked up a hitchhiker, a tall young black man with caramel skin and a dazzling smile. We spoke of many things. He seemed to know my soul. I felt an instant friendship growing in me, as between old friends. When it grew dark I invited him to share my motel room.
Big mistake.
It started with his complaining of a backache. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll just say that he insisted. I didn’t want to. It just got out of hand. What was supposed to be therapeutic became sensual. Don’t ask me how it happened. He just seemed to control me. That voice, that driving, compelling voice. Ugh. I feel so dirty, still. I can hardly say it. Yes. With release. But that’s not the worst of it.
He took out a can from his knapsack, and before I knew what was happening he was dangling smoked herring from his toes and making me bark like a seal. I felt so degraded. He called me his tee jolie blond and told me he’d eat me up like graton. I feel so dirty.
It goes on. I can’t bear to speak of it. I snuck my keys out of his shoe and crept out of the motel room while he was showering. I felt lucky to be alive.
And that’s why I will never, ever vote for Barack H. Obama.
Sometimes I wake up in the night in a cold sweat. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep at all. But sometimes, when the wind shifts and I catch the wild scent of the teeming ocean in the air, I can’t help but feel the touch of strong long fingers in the breeze that tousles my hair.
J
It happened more than 25 years ago. I was driving cross country on some business -- the details hardly matter. Outside Collinsville, Illinois I picked up a hitchhiker, a tall young black man with caramel skin and a dazzling smile. We spoke of many things. He seemed to know my soul. I felt an instant friendship growing in me, as between old friends. When it grew dark I invited him to share my motel room.
Big mistake.
It started with his complaining of a backache. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll just say that he insisted. I didn’t want to. It just got out of hand. What was supposed to be therapeutic became sensual. Don’t ask me how it happened. He just seemed to control me. That voice, that driving, compelling voice. Ugh. I feel so dirty, still. I can hardly say it. Yes. With release. But that’s not the worst of it.
He took out a can from his knapsack, and before I knew what was happening he was dangling smoked herring from his toes and making me bark like a seal. I felt so degraded. He called me his tee jolie blond and told me he’d eat me up like graton. I feel so dirty.
It goes on. I can’t bear to speak of it. I snuck my keys out of his shoe and crept out of the motel room while he was showering. I felt lucky to be alive.
And that’s why I will never, ever vote for Barack H. Obama.
Sometimes I wake up in the night in a cold sweat. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep at all. But sometimes, when the wind shifts and I catch the wild scent of the teeming ocean in the air, I can’t help but feel the touch of strong long fingers in the breeze that tousles my hair.
J
Arioso
Emotions? Yes, I suppose I have to confess, however reluctantly, that I have them. They’re not bad in themselves, but they trouble one so, don’t you agree? Such a bother, to be befuddled when one’s mental acuity is most needed. Take tonight, for example. One young drake was preening over his sexual attractiveness, elaborating upon a potential conquest -- without the need for seduction, as he took pains to make clear. It seems the colleen is already attached to some paramour, but has a wandering eye. What ever shall he do, he wondered aloud. And a Greek chorus of piping voices chimed in with their biologically determinative conclusion: “Fuck her!” And why indeed, why not indeed?
At which point a lone voice cried out, some hydraulic pressure forcing air through larynx almost involuntarily: “It has something to do with integrity.”
Yes, emotions make us fools. Take me, for instance. It wasn’t my business. I wasn’t part of the conversation. I had nothing to add, that everyone doesn’t know could be added, however otherwise unspoken such a contribution would remain. The chorus leader harmonized some coloratura to the effect of, why not? You know -- get what you can, while you can. Some disparate recitatives confirmed the theme and there seemed no further point, if initial point there had ever been, in my contributing anything more to that particular oratorio.
But on the way home, after I’d forgotten all of the music and most of the words, it came back to me, that ear worm of a tune. "Why not?" What power could the shadow of integrity possibly have over the solidity of our actions? Only that which we give it. Conscience is such an obsolete concept. Fool’s gold. I however remembered how I used to talk to the teenagers, back when I taught teenagers. I’d tell them, when they riffed on the theme of "why not", that we are what we do. We are what we do.
If we do sneaky, betraying, dishonest things, what are we? We are what we do. Anything we do in fear of being found out -- what man can do such things? To skulk and creep and tremble lest he be discovered -- how pitiful. There are several kinds of pride, but only one worth having: pride in one’s actions. What is the counterpart of such pride? It must be shame. Some might claim they feel no shame. If so, their conduct would reveal it. And if that is the case, they can have no pride either. If it is not pride, as I have defined it, then it can only be ego. What is the foundation of ego? If not actions, not accomplishments, then I suggest ego would be built on insecurity.
All this is philosophy. Philosophy is like emotion -- excretions, each, the former of mind into action, and the latter of mind into body. Yes, they matter, but only to those to whom they matter. How can you teach someone about value? I never argue about morality. It is something to be asserted, and either they get it or they don’t.
If you ever manage to burn wet wood, it smokes so that nothing can be clearly seen. Best to let the wood dry out -- the night is long and dark and cold and filled with wildness, and the day might be miserable too, burning with its own pounding heat. But it will dry out the wood, so it prepares a sort of comfort.
Self respect has a price. Not everyone understands that. Not everyone understands that the compromises one makes are paid for from the treasures of one’s soul. I know, I’m a fool. But sometimes a fool’s gold is real gold. Not everyone needs to spend long nights in the cold, and anguished days in what seems an inferno. Is pain the alchemist's crucible that transmutes base metal into gold? Not everyone needs pain. But everyone needs limits. Everyone needs to fast sometimes, for all that hardly anyone does. We think we will not be slaves. But we are slaves to appetite, unless we are its master.
I know. I know. I'm very preachy. I just about didn't post this one, it's so very preachy. But I'm speaking to teenagers.
J
At which point a lone voice cried out, some hydraulic pressure forcing air through larynx almost involuntarily: “It has something to do with integrity.”
Yes, emotions make us fools. Take me, for instance. It wasn’t my business. I wasn’t part of the conversation. I had nothing to add, that everyone doesn’t know could be added, however otherwise unspoken such a contribution would remain. The chorus leader harmonized some coloratura to the effect of, why not? You know -- get what you can, while you can. Some disparate recitatives confirmed the theme and there seemed no further point, if initial point there had ever been, in my contributing anything more to that particular oratorio.
But on the way home, after I’d forgotten all of the music and most of the words, it came back to me, that ear worm of a tune. "Why not?" What power could the shadow of integrity possibly have over the solidity of our actions? Only that which we give it. Conscience is such an obsolete concept. Fool’s gold. I however remembered how I used to talk to the teenagers, back when I taught teenagers. I’d tell them, when they riffed on the theme of "why not", that we are what we do. We are what we do.
If we do sneaky, betraying, dishonest things, what are we? We are what we do. Anything we do in fear of being found out -- what man can do such things? To skulk and creep and tremble lest he be discovered -- how pitiful. There are several kinds of pride, but only one worth having: pride in one’s actions. What is the counterpart of such pride? It must be shame. Some might claim they feel no shame. If so, their conduct would reveal it. And if that is the case, they can have no pride either. If it is not pride, as I have defined it, then it can only be ego. What is the foundation of ego? If not actions, not accomplishments, then I suggest ego would be built on insecurity.
All this is philosophy. Philosophy is like emotion -- excretions, each, the former of mind into action, and the latter of mind into body. Yes, they matter, but only to those to whom they matter. How can you teach someone about value? I never argue about morality. It is something to be asserted, and either they get it or they don’t.
If you ever manage to burn wet wood, it smokes so that nothing can be clearly seen. Best to let the wood dry out -- the night is long and dark and cold and filled with wildness, and the day might be miserable too, burning with its own pounding heat. But it will dry out the wood, so it prepares a sort of comfort.
Self respect has a price. Not everyone understands that. Not everyone understands that the compromises one makes are paid for from the treasures of one’s soul. I know, I’m a fool. But sometimes a fool’s gold is real gold. Not everyone needs to spend long nights in the cold, and anguished days in what seems an inferno. Is pain the alchemist's crucible that transmutes base metal into gold? Not everyone needs pain. But everyone needs limits. Everyone needs to fast sometimes, for all that hardly anyone does. We think we will not be slaves. But we are slaves to appetite, unless we are its master.
I know. I know. I'm very preachy. I just about didn't post this one, it's so very preachy. But I'm speaking to teenagers.
J
Monday, February 11, 2008
In the Land of the Blind
Soft power. What can you do with soft power? Is there even such a thing? Sounds like a marginal tumescence. Oh darling, you're so spongy! And this is what Europe, old New Europe, imagines will keep it safe? Geo-economics over geopolitics? Robert Kagan says it true: "Europe's nightmares are the 1930s; Russia's nightmares are the 1990s. Europe sees the answer to its problems in transcending the nation-state and power. For Russians, the solution is in restoring them."
It's called being too clever for your own good. Getting all the theoretical ducks in a row, while forgetting that there are real shotguns in the world. Throughout the '90s, while Europe was busy turning itself into one gigantic Switzerland, all about money, Russian democracy was miscarrying itself. All those wonderful sentiments about freedom and opportunity turned out to be inconsonant with the comfort that stultifying Communist bureaucracy brought. Not every heart, it now becomes clear, yearns for freedom. That conceit is another of those mere theories about human nature that intellectuals and other fools like me please themselves by propounding in oh so convincing a manner. Passion sound convincing. But, for life, certainty is more necessary than freedom.
Europe slashed its defense spending. Such an action was ever so safe. What enemy was there, after all, in the Nineties? Can you name one? No, you can't. Nobody can. There were no enemies. There were only small, insignificant, localized conflicts. A lot of carnage in Africa, but who cares about Africa. Some weird stuff in the Balkans or where ever -- that Kosovo dog that clinton wagged. We didn't even argue about elections in the Nineties -- you know it's true. We all wanted clinton so very much. I mean, we ran Dole, didn't we.
Well, that's the point. There are challenges that aren't obvious. Just necessary to see. That's how we judge the wisdom and success of our leaders, to misuse the word. But the word is accurate in a sense -- after all, some lemming must be out front. That's a sort of leadership. For those among our ranks who desire a long and prosperous life, however, we must require more from our leaders than present comfort. Thus, Europe might have looked to its own security, rather than trusting to the benevolence of distant and despised America. Our bases, after all, need not always be there. There might come a time when we finally consider it in our own best interest to shore up our own tilting buttresses.
Now Russia is returning to its former ways. Democracy, such as it has been, has failed. Failed again. It's only fitting. There is hardly any nation more conservative than Russia. For a thousand years it had only two ruling houses, Rurik and Romanov. How very predictable that it should revert again to some caesar of a Csar, either a returned prince, or a third House, of, say, Putin. And as we know, empires are built on conquest. There it is, Europe, spread out like a pampered hog, awaiting the finely honed blades of Russia's double-headed ax.
Yes, I'm catastrophising. Of course I am. It's what I do. Very irresponsible of me. I'm a regular Chicken Little, always clucking over dangers that no one else could ever see. After all, nowadays empires are formed by committee. Bureaucrats gather together in The Hague or Jedda or Tehran and gentlemenly agree upon the obverse design of the latest conjoined currency. What danger, from any direction? It is summertime, and we must celebrate the season with dancing and much music. No dark thunderheads from the brooding Urals can shadow our merriment. Our leaders lead the rondo with a merry fiddling tune. How gay.
What peril? "After a decade of voluntary retreat, Russia now pushes back against Europe's powerful attractive force, using traditional levers of power. It has imposed a total embargo on trade with Georgia. It has episodically denied oil supplies to Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus; cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and Moldova; and punished Estonia with a suspension of rail traffic and a cyber-attack on its government's computer system in a dispute over a Soviet war memorial. It supports separatist movements in Georgia and keeps its own armed forces on Georgian territory and in Moldova. It has effectively pulled out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, freeing it to deploy forces wherever necessary on its western flank."
No one holds a grudge like a Russian. No one wishes their neighbor more ill. There's a venerable Russian story, to just this effect. It seems an angel visited a kulak -- let's call him Ivan -- and offered to grant him any one of his heart's desires. Imagine how great was Ivan's joy. But then the angel added that, whatever he asked for, his neighbor would be given the same thing, twice over. Ivan's brow grew dark and he fell silent. Then a sly smile twisted his lip. "Grant me," said Ivan, "that I be blind in one eye."
J
It's called being too clever for your own good. Getting all the theoretical ducks in a row, while forgetting that there are real shotguns in the world. Throughout the '90s, while Europe was busy turning itself into one gigantic Switzerland, all about money, Russian democracy was miscarrying itself. All those wonderful sentiments about freedom and opportunity turned out to be inconsonant with the comfort that stultifying Communist bureaucracy brought. Not every heart, it now becomes clear, yearns for freedom. That conceit is another of those mere theories about human nature that intellectuals and other fools like me please themselves by propounding in oh so convincing a manner. Passion sound convincing. But, for life, certainty is more necessary than freedom.
Europe slashed its defense spending. Such an action was ever so safe. What enemy was there, after all, in the Nineties? Can you name one? No, you can't. Nobody can. There were no enemies. There were only small, insignificant, localized conflicts. A lot of carnage in Africa, but who cares about Africa. Some weird stuff in the Balkans or where ever -- that Kosovo dog that clinton wagged. We didn't even argue about elections in the Nineties -- you know it's true. We all wanted clinton so very much. I mean, we ran Dole, didn't we.
Well, that's the point. There are challenges that aren't obvious. Just necessary to see. That's how we judge the wisdom and success of our leaders, to misuse the word. But the word is accurate in a sense -- after all, some lemming must be out front. That's a sort of leadership. For those among our ranks who desire a long and prosperous life, however, we must require more from our leaders than present comfort. Thus, Europe might have looked to its own security, rather than trusting to the benevolence of distant and despised America. Our bases, after all, need not always be there. There might come a time when we finally consider it in our own best interest to shore up our own tilting buttresses.
Now Russia is returning to its former ways. Democracy, such as it has been, has failed. Failed again. It's only fitting. There is hardly any nation more conservative than Russia. For a thousand years it had only two ruling houses, Rurik and Romanov. How very predictable that it should revert again to some caesar of a Csar, either a returned prince, or a third House, of, say, Putin. And as we know, empires are built on conquest. There it is, Europe, spread out like a pampered hog, awaiting the finely honed blades of Russia's double-headed ax.
Yes, I'm catastrophising. Of course I am. It's what I do. Very irresponsible of me. I'm a regular Chicken Little, always clucking over dangers that no one else could ever see. After all, nowadays empires are formed by committee. Bureaucrats gather together in The Hague or Jedda or Tehran and gentlemenly agree upon the obverse design of the latest conjoined currency. What danger, from any direction? It is summertime, and we must celebrate the season with dancing and much music. No dark thunderheads from the brooding Urals can shadow our merriment. Our leaders lead the rondo with a merry fiddling tune. How gay.
What peril? "After a decade of voluntary retreat, Russia now pushes back against Europe's powerful attractive force, using traditional levers of power. It has imposed a total embargo on trade with Georgia. It has episodically denied oil supplies to Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus; cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and Moldova; and punished Estonia with a suspension of rail traffic and a cyber-attack on its government's computer system in a dispute over a Soviet war memorial. It supports separatist movements in Georgia and keeps its own armed forces on Georgian territory and in Moldova. It has effectively pulled out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, freeing it to deploy forces wherever necessary on its western flank."
No one holds a grudge like a Russian. No one wishes their neighbor more ill. There's a venerable Russian story, to just this effect. It seems an angel visited a kulak -- let's call him Ivan -- and offered to grant him any one of his heart's desires. Imagine how great was Ivan's joy. But then the angel added that, whatever he asked for, his neighbor would be given the same thing, twice over. Ivan's brow grew dark and he fell silent. Then a sly smile twisted his lip. "Grant me," said Ivan, "that I be blind in one eye."
J
Sunday, February 10, 2008
PSI
IBM doesn't make many adding machines anymore. Maybe it doesn't make any. Maybe nobody does. Maybe nobody makes slide rules, either. I suppose there are still a few buggy whip manufacturers, but not on the vast industrial scale of a hundred years ago. IBM makes computers, nowadays. Used to be adding machines, now it's computers. Slide rules, if you youngsters even know what that is, have become calculators -- or am I dating myself again? -- is it blueberries and xfones and Dick Tracy wrisTVs?
Uncertainty is frightening. For all that equations do seem to balance, division does leave remainders. There are leftover people. Not every job is replaced. There is unemployment, for all that obsolete industries give way to technical improvements.
Thus, biofuels. Sounds like such a good idea. Energy independence. The only reason the Middle East matters in the slightest is the oil. We know this is true, because of Kyrgyzstan. What's that? Hardly anyone knows. Some central Asian former Soviet. And the reason hardly anyone knows hardly anything about it is that it's not Saudi Arabia. If Kyrgyzstan had oil, we'd know all about it. Maybe it does have oil. But not oil for us. So that proves my point, somehow. Anyways, if we could somehow make our own fuel, out of, as it were, nothing at all, why that would be terrific. A new industry, to replace the 19th century one, and no more terrorism to boot. What could possible go wrong?
Soybean prices have gone up 125 percent in the past year. In Jakarta, 10,000 Indonesians recently noted this fact with mass protests. Farmers, you see, have switched from growing food staples to growing biofuels. In Indonesia for example, 44 million acres formerly used to produce human food are now devoted to feeding internal combustion engines. Furthermore, virgin forests are being razed for the same purpose. All us green lefty treehuggers know that forests remove greenhouse gases. We don't care so much about high food prices, but the trees ... the treeeees!
As George Will informs us, "On the outer continental shelf there is a 50-year supply of clean-burning natural gas, 420 trillion cubic feet of it, that the government, at the behest of the planet's saviors, will not allow to be extracted." Moreover, bill clinton, "by executive edict, declared 1.7 million acres of Utah to be a national monument. Under those acres are the largest known deposit -- more than 60 billion tons -- of low-sulfur, clean-burning coal." Meanwhile, "if the entire U.S. corn crop were turned into ethanol -- it might have to be to meet the goal of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017 -- it would displace 3.5 percent of gasoline use, just slightly more than would be displaced if drivers properly inflated their tires."
Let's examine the logic. We're making ethanol and other biofuels, which have a negligible benefit to, or a negative effect on, the environment, while removing food from, let's face it, the poor. There comes a point when stupidity becomes indistinguishable from evil. The internal combustion engine is a 19th century technology. Can't we do better? One hundred years ago, fully half of all cars were electric. That was a different time? So what. Oil won out over electricity because it was perceived to be cheaper. Get it? It's not cheaper anymore.
I suggest there must be some way to save the planet and to save our way of life as well. It would start, I suggest, by inflating all these flabby tires. Then phasing out all those gigantic SUVs that you people insist on driving. Then how about making your second car a hybrid, or something even more intelligent. Come on, dude. You can chart it out for yourself. Try reusing your grocery bags. Weather-proofing your windows. Maybe replacing your burnt out lightbulbs with something a bit more efficient. And speaking of flabby tires, do a few sit-ups.
Because you have no right at all -- no credibility, I should say -- in complaining about the Arabs or terrorism (but I am redundant) when you're funding them with your all-night porchlight. You think such a small thing can't have an effect? Then you must not vote, either. I refer you to the factoid, above, regarding properly inflated tires.
I don't know what the waste industry will be replaced with. The fact that the rest of the world is scandalized by American waste need not disturb us. We should be disturbed because our waste is an affront to our grandparents, who survived the Depression and the War by not wasting. We should be disturbed because it seems a moral sin, to squander something that is valuable. Perhaps it's a reaction to the wrong and ignorant idea so many of you poor misinformed ignoramuses have about the Puritans? How I pity you. We mustn't be like them? That's another discussion. The relevant point is that we find wisdom where we find it.
I suggest we've looked long enough to the Middle East. All the light that will rise from that horizon has done so already. Nowadays the Mosselmen have two things only to offer. Oil, and death. Screw 'em. We need a Manhattan Project, to find the way to turn cellulose into liquid fuel. Some kind of bacteria will do it. Then our garbage will run our SUVs. Seems, somehow, appropriate.
J
Uncertainty is frightening. For all that equations do seem to balance, division does leave remainders. There are leftover people. Not every job is replaced. There is unemployment, for all that obsolete industries give way to technical improvements.
Thus, biofuels. Sounds like such a good idea. Energy independence. The only reason the Middle East matters in the slightest is the oil. We know this is true, because of Kyrgyzstan. What's that? Hardly anyone knows. Some central Asian former Soviet. And the reason hardly anyone knows hardly anything about it is that it's not Saudi Arabia. If Kyrgyzstan had oil, we'd know all about it. Maybe it does have oil. But not oil for us. So that proves my point, somehow. Anyways, if we could somehow make our own fuel, out of, as it were, nothing at all, why that would be terrific. A new industry, to replace the 19th century one, and no more terrorism to boot. What could possible go wrong?
Soybean prices have gone up 125 percent in the past year. In Jakarta, 10,000 Indonesians recently noted this fact with mass protests. Farmers, you see, have switched from growing food staples to growing biofuels. In Indonesia for example, 44 million acres formerly used to produce human food are now devoted to feeding internal combustion engines. Furthermore, virgin forests are being razed for the same purpose. All us green lefty treehuggers know that forests remove greenhouse gases. We don't care so much about high food prices, but the trees ... the treeeees!
As George Will informs us, "On the outer continental shelf there is a 50-year supply of clean-burning natural gas, 420 trillion cubic feet of it, that the government, at the behest of the planet's saviors, will not allow to be extracted." Moreover, bill clinton, "by executive edict, declared 1.7 million acres of Utah to be a national monument. Under those acres are the largest known deposit -- more than 60 billion tons -- of low-sulfur, clean-burning coal." Meanwhile, "if the entire U.S. corn crop were turned into ethanol -- it might have to be to meet the goal of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017 -- it would displace 3.5 percent of gasoline use, just slightly more than would be displaced if drivers properly inflated their tires."
Let's examine the logic. We're making ethanol and other biofuels, which have a negligible benefit to, or a negative effect on, the environment, while removing food from, let's face it, the poor. There comes a point when stupidity becomes indistinguishable from evil. The internal combustion engine is a 19th century technology. Can't we do better? One hundred years ago, fully half of all cars were electric. That was a different time? So what. Oil won out over electricity because it was perceived to be cheaper. Get it? It's not cheaper anymore.
I suggest there must be some way to save the planet and to save our way of life as well. It would start, I suggest, by inflating all these flabby tires. Then phasing out all those gigantic SUVs that you people insist on driving. Then how about making your second car a hybrid, or something even more intelligent. Come on, dude. You can chart it out for yourself. Try reusing your grocery bags. Weather-proofing your windows. Maybe replacing your burnt out lightbulbs with something a bit more efficient. And speaking of flabby tires, do a few sit-ups.
Because you have no right at all -- no credibility, I should say -- in complaining about the Arabs or terrorism (but I am redundant) when you're funding them with your all-night porchlight. You think such a small thing can't have an effect? Then you must not vote, either. I refer you to the factoid, above, regarding properly inflated tires.
I don't know what the waste industry will be replaced with. The fact that the rest of the world is scandalized by American waste need not disturb us. We should be disturbed because our waste is an affront to our grandparents, who survived the Depression and the War by not wasting. We should be disturbed because it seems a moral sin, to squander something that is valuable. Perhaps it's a reaction to the wrong and ignorant idea so many of you poor misinformed ignoramuses have about the Puritans? How I pity you. We mustn't be like them? That's another discussion. The relevant point is that we find wisdom where we find it.
I suggest we've looked long enough to the Middle East. All the light that will rise from that horizon has done so already. Nowadays the Mosselmen have two things only to offer. Oil, and death. Screw 'em. We need a Manhattan Project, to find the way to turn cellulose into liquid fuel. Some kind of bacteria will do it. Then our garbage will run our SUVs. Seems, somehow, appropriate.
J
Friday, February 8, 2008
People In Order
Who supposes that God must watch over America with a special providence has insufficiently understood the Book of Judges. The Lord’s very Chosen People, from whom He removed the protection of His Hand. I dig out my tattered old Bible and it falls open to tell me that when the tribes fail and fail and fail, He leaves the lords of the Philistines in the land, as a test. And when the tribes do evil in the sight of the Lord, His anger burns hot against the children of Israel, and He sells them time and again into the hands of the oppressor. Always some hero rises up to shake off the chains, but that time and that generation passes, and with it, that blessing.
It seems to be a rule.
Well? We don’t show up in the Bible. America. We are blessed, as we have been blessed, through our inheritance, not our present qualities. We’ve been living off of our inheritance. How much are we leaving for our posterity? America is great not because of its real estate. Other countries possess natural resources. We are blessed because of our institutions. The rule of law. The separation of powers. The mechanisms of checks and balances. A decentralized, a federal organization for our provinces. It is these, which are both the product and the shaper of that original American genius, that has made us the light and the savior of the world. But shall we imagine it must always be so?
China stirs from its long slumber. India looks up from its poverty and discovers that its population is a resource, not a burden. Russia is rich with gold and oil. Europe is united in a reconstituting Imperium. In such a crowded field, is there only one bright star? It is not wealth or land or power that make a nation great. It is vision and energy. It is faith and optimism. It is confidence.
The silly season of electioneering disposes us to consider the future, and more, makes us think we can make respectable predictions. I play that game. It’s just a game. I don’t take it seriously -- I just like to sound authoritative. Politics is my spectator sport. The reality, however, is that we don’t really seem to elect leaders. Hardly ever. We elect figureheads and spokesmen. Power is so neatly divided that we can make serious mistakes in our choices, and the consequences are often less than our foolishness deserves. It isn’t the leaders who get us into trouble. It’s us. Kingdoms suffer for the iniquity of their kings. Tyrannies are undone by their despots. But sovereignty in America resides in the people. When things go wrong, we’d love to blame DC. We should look to our own actions and character.
So it was with the Israelites. When the land became polluted with the whorings of the people, the Lord grew wroth. There was no king in the land. Sovereignty resided with them, and they called down the raiders from the hills and from out of the desert. Their iniquity summoned their punishment. Their repentance raised up a savior.
Where is our savior? The question is premature. First we must face our iniquities. It isn’t enough to decry promiscuity, when the internet is used mostly for pornography. It’s meaningless to bemoan the shoddy state of public education, when parents don’t supervise their children’s homework. There’s no use complaining about political corruption when we keep reelecting the same characters, and when we ourselves cheat or lie, or fail to excel in our integrity. It all has the same nature, for all that the degree is less. No one needs me to reel out a long list of national problems writ small in our own lives. The point is that there is no leader who will save us.
We save ourselves. We have to be our own heroes. If a Judge is to rise up, it will be when we rise up in our own lives, as judges of ourselves. Great Awakenings start with small awakenings. There is no more conservative principle than this. Responsibility starts with the individual.
A theme of my life, in the past number of years, is that there is no justice. I know this from both theory and practice, and it has poisoned my soul. Shall I die, then, from this poison? I console myself as best I can with the knowledge that as imperfect and vile as this world is, there is a judgment coming that will set the balance right. Anyone who doesn’t see the need for Hell hasn’t thought deeply enough about the nature of corruption. That’s not an antidote for my poisoned soul, but it’s the bottle that holds it. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should concern myself with forgiveness, and leave profound ruminations to beings more divine than myself. Still, it’s nice to know that there is a Hell. It makes sense of our yearning for justice and a righteous judge.
But I was talking about America. Yes, we do need to shudder at the thought that there is a righteous God. Our great national sin is no longer slavery. That we have banded together to nod and wink at the dismemberment of scores of millions of babies over the past three and a half decades, well, no voice that I can hear cries out for rescue, as the blacks must have done every night of every year of their oppression. Into what tyrant’s hand have we been given, that we are so silent? And when public funds are used to subsidize fatherlessness, and to engender a sense of entitlement in people of worthless character, and this is done as if it were a right, and with the effect of suppressing the true, the actual virtue of charity -- who are we to blame?
Our responsibly starts, it does not end, at the voting booth. We do not hand off our obligations as citizens because we have voted. Our hands are not clean just because we think we’ve elected someone to blame. Government does not supervise us, here in America. We supervise it.
Until that idea is understood, and absorbed, and implemented, all the speechified blather we’ve been hearing about what a True Reagan Conservative is will continue to be just more pathetic lying empty and meaningless trash, no matter how sincerely uttered by the guy on the stage. We can’t make justice. There is no justice. We can, however, seek some lesser standard to implement, such as the rule of law, and the separation of powers. We can, and actually we must, be agents that will check and balance the power of the entrenched privileged logothetes who imagine themselves as wearing purple. They are not kings, they are not craftsmen. They are servants. They should be treated with courtesy, as even condemned criminals might be. Some of them might earn respect, as a diligent employee should earn the respect of his boss. But we’re the boss.
Sorry to be so obvious. I’m speaking mostly to myself. It’s sort of like praying. Maybe someone else is listening. Hope he gets something out of it too.
J
It seems to be a rule.
Well? We don’t show up in the Bible. America. We are blessed, as we have been blessed, through our inheritance, not our present qualities. We’ve been living off of our inheritance. How much are we leaving for our posterity? America is great not because of its real estate. Other countries possess natural resources. We are blessed because of our institutions. The rule of law. The separation of powers. The mechanisms of checks and balances. A decentralized, a federal organization for our provinces. It is these, which are both the product and the shaper of that original American genius, that has made us the light and the savior of the world. But shall we imagine it must always be so?
China stirs from its long slumber. India looks up from its poverty and discovers that its population is a resource, not a burden. Russia is rich with gold and oil. Europe is united in a reconstituting Imperium. In such a crowded field, is there only one bright star? It is not wealth or land or power that make a nation great. It is vision and energy. It is faith and optimism. It is confidence.
The silly season of electioneering disposes us to consider the future, and more, makes us think we can make respectable predictions. I play that game. It’s just a game. I don’t take it seriously -- I just like to sound authoritative. Politics is my spectator sport. The reality, however, is that we don’t really seem to elect leaders. Hardly ever. We elect figureheads and spokesmen. Power is so neatly divided that we can make serious mistakes in our choices, and the consequences are often less than our foolishness deserves. It isn’t the leaders who get us into trouble. It’s us. Kingdoms suffer for the iniquity of their kings. Tyrannies are undone by their despots. But sovereignty in America resides in the people. When things go wrong, we’d love to blame DC. We should look to our own actions and character.
So it was with the Israelites. When the land became polluted with the whorings of the people, the Lord grew wroth. There was no king in the land. Sovereignty resided with them, and they called down the raiders from the hills and from out of the desert. Their iniquity summoned their punishment. Their repentance raised up a savior.
Where is our savior? The question is premature. First we must face our iniquities. It isn’t enough to decry promiscuity, when the internet is used mostly for pornography. It’s meaningless to bemoan the shoddy state of public education, when parents don’t supervise their children’s homework. There’s no use complaining about political corruption when we keep reelecting the same characters, and when we ourselves cheat or lie, or fail to excel in our integrity. It all has the same nature, for all that the degree is less. No one needs me to reel out a long list of national problems writ small in our own lives. The point is that there is no leader who will save us.
We save ourselves. We have to be our own heroes. If a Judge is to rise up, it will be when we rise up in our own lives, as judges of ourselves. Great Awakenings start with small awakenings. There is no more conservative principle than this. Responsibility starts with the individual.
A theme of my life, in the past number of years, is that there is no justice. I know this from both theory and practice, and it has poisoned my soul. Shall I die, then, from this poison? I console myself as best I can with the knowledge that as imperfect and vile as this world is, there is a judgment coming that will set the balance right. Anyone who doesn’t see the need for Hell hasn’t thought deeply enough about the nature of corruption. That’s not an antidote for my poisoned soul, but it’s the bottle that holds it. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should concern myself with forgiveness, and leave profound ruminations to beings more divine than myself. Still, it’s nice to know that there is a Hell. It makes sense of our yearning for justice and a righteous judge.
But I was talking about America. Yes, we do need to shudder at the thought that there is a righteous God. Our great national sin is no longer slavery. That we have banded together to nod and wink at the dismemberment of scores of millions of babies over the past three and a half decades, well, no voice that I can hear cries out for rescue, as the blacks must have done every night of every year of their oppression. Into what tyrant’s hand have we been given, that we are so silent? And when public funds are used to subsidize fatherlessness, and to engender a sense of entitlement in people of worthless character, and this is done as if it were a right, and with the effect of suppressing the true, the actual virtue of charity -- who are we to blame?
Our responsibly starts, it does not end, at the voting booth. We do not hand off our obligations as citizens because we have voted. Our hands are not clean just because we think we’ve elected someone to blame. Government does not supervise us, here in America. We supervise it.
Until that idea is understood, and absorbed, and implemented, all the speechified blather we’ve been hearing about what a True Reagan Conservative is will continue to be just more pathetic lying empty and meaningless trash, no matter how sincerely uttered by the guy on the stage. We can’t make justice. There is no justice. We can, however, seek some lesser standard to implement, such as the rule of law, and the separation of powers. We can, and actually we must, be agents that will check and balance the power of the entrenched privileged logothetes who imagine themselves as wearing purple. They are not kings, they are not craftsmen. They are servants. They should be treated with courtesy, as even condemned criminals might be. Some of them might earn respect, as a diligent employee should earn the respect of his boss. But we’re the boss.
Sorry to be so obvious. I’m speaking mostly to myself. It’s sort of like praying. Maybe someone else is listening. Hope he gets something out of it too.
J
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
cC
Carter was a much worse president than clinton. Carter was the worst president we ever had. Why is it then that I insist on relegating clinton always to the lower case? Because Carter was incompetent and earns disrespect because of his minimal capabilities, but his character was not vile, and the disrespect he brought to his office was not through his selfishness. clinton on the other hand used the presidency for his own gratification, as a personal blowup doll.
Which brings me to wonder, which is more important, character of capabilities? Emotionally we’d have to say character. We hate them, as it were, because we think they’re bad. But it really doesn’t matter if they’re bad. Nixon, or Carter, or clinton or Bush -- all hated, by their various oppositions. What matters though is the state of affairs after they leave power.
Nixon was indeed a disgrace, vindictive and the least conservative Republican president ever. It pains me to say it, because the people who hated him are what I would consider to be the enemies of what America is. I might be wrong. But the enemy of my enemy is closer to me than he’d otherwise be. The way to decide the issue is to answer the question, was the country better off because Nixon had been president. A what-if question, and so a matter of opinion, but the answer seems to be no, the country was not better off.
Same with clinton. He sat in office during a quiescent decade. His minimal accomplishments reflect a lack of crises. But such periods are the perfect time for consolidating assets and advancing interests and building infrastructure. What did clinton do with the wealth of the ’90s? It went somewhere. Where? I don’t know. Down the toilet. Wasted, like all his opportunities.
I heard some caller on the radio say he wanted clinton back in the White House because things were better in the ’90s. What can you do with someone like that? Have patience, I suppose. Maybe nobody ever explained it to him before. That things were better because we’d just won the Cold War, which had nothing to do with clinton. It’s like thinking Santa Claus is responsible for Christmas. Son, there is no Santa Claus.
It has to do with understanding the nature of power. There are indeed great men, just as there are pathetic men. Both sorts find power. But both are as much the product as the shaper of their times. Destiny is a partnership. Buchanan and Lincoln had the same opportunities. The times were the same -- character made the difference. If Gore had won in 2000, Iraq would be a Baathist stronghold and Iran would be nuclear. Oil would be 200 dollars a barrel. We’d be in a recession to make the ’30s look like the Roaring Twenties. Maybe I’m wrong. My point is that there is a time for the raw exercise of power, just as there is a time for caution. Carter should have used his power. clinton should have used his opportunities. Used them for the good of the nation, that is, rather than for his orgasms.
Now the clintons are urging America to build a bridge to the 20th Century. Sort of a reversal, eh? Part of a reversal of fortune. Here they are, intoning a mantra of change, and they’re more retrograde than the Dole/Kemp ticket of the Stupid Party. The country seems not to be quite that stupid. Stupider, maybe, but not stupid to that precise degree.
I say stupider, because the Dems did indeed go for Obama, last night. He won 13 states to Hillary’s 8, and he won a dozen or so more delegates. How is that not a victory? The Dems could also have to wait for their convention to settle the matter, at which point Edwards and his delegates will matter. That’s creepy. He’d go with Hillary, because of the Kerry betrayal in endorsing Obama. For all that Edwards talks about the Two Americas, he’s as establishment as they get. It’s just rhetoric, see? Just words to feed to the yard chickens before he cuts off their heads.
What a load of hooey. Change change change. And here we are, electing two party establishment apparatchiks. Hillary and McCain. Yes, McCain is establishment -- you can tell by who’s for him. Y’see, there’s the establishment, and there’s the grass roots. Establishment is not, and never is, about conservative values. It’s about the machine and pork spending. Not conservative. You don’t stay in the Senate for decades without being plugged into the system. Romney is rich, but he’s Mormon, which is fringe. He’s a big-time business man, but he’s got a set of values not in accord with Halliburton and Big Oil and whatever other bugaboos control our rightwing thinking.
As for Obama, it’s blacks and the youth vote that puts him on top -- that's not the establishment, the entrenched power. The liberal welfare plantation for which he's so eloquent a spokesman has agents, employees ... uh, I suppose I shouldn't say 'slaves' ... that work for the interests of the masters, out of misplaced conviction. And if he’s not establishment, then the establishment must be ... uh, well, the other one. Those other ones, the c’s, will win at the convention, if it comes to that. That’s where the machine is strongest. So I suppose it’s an establishment battle, as they’ve all been, since Carter won. I’m not the prophet around here, but so it seems.
It seems that the decade to come will not be quiescent. We don’t want a backstep into the Nineties. We don’t want an untried orator. We don’t want an erratic, vindictive non-conservative old man.
As I say, interesting days.
J
Which brings me to wonder, which is more important, character of capabilities? Emotionally we’d have to say character. We hate them, as it were, because we think they’re bad. But it really doesn’t matter if they’re bad. Nixon, or Carter, or clinton or Bush -- all hated, by their various oppositions. What matters though is the state of affairs after they leave power.
Nixon was indeed a disgrace, vindictive and the least conservative Republican president ever. It pains me to say it, because the people who hated him are what I would consider to be the enemies of what America is. I might be wrong. But the enemy of my enemy is closer to me than he’d otherwise be. The way to decide the issue is to answer the question, was the country better off because Nixon had been president. A what-if question, and so a matter of opinion, but the answer seems to be no, the country was not better off.
Same with clinton. He sat in office during a quiescent decade. His minimal accomplishments reflect a lack of crises. But such periods are the perfect time for consolidating assets and advancing interests and building infrastructure. What did clinton do with the wealth of the ’90s? It went somewhere. Where? I don’t know. Down the toilet. Wasted, like all his opportunities.
I heard some caller on the radio say he wanted clinton back in the White House because things were better in the ’90s. What can you do with someone like that? Have patience, I suppose. Maybe nobody ever explained it to him before. That things were better because we’d just won the Cold War, which had nothing to do with clinton. It’s like thinking Santa Claus is responsible for Christmas. Son, there is no Santa Claus.
It has to do with understanding the nature of power. There are indeed great men, just as there are pathetic men. Both sorts find power. But both are as much the product as the shaper of their times. Destiny is a partnership. Buchanan and Lincoln had the same opportunities. The times were the same -- character made the difference. If Gore had won in 2000, Iraq would be a Baathist stronghold and Iran would be nuclear. Oil would be 200 dollars a barrel. We’d be in a recession to make the ’30s look like the Roaring Twenties. Maybe I’m wrong. My point is that there is a time for the raw exercise of power, just as there is a time for caution. Carter should have used his power. clinton should have used his opportunities. Used them for the good of the nation, that is, rather than for his orgasms.
Now the clintons are urging America to build a bridge to the 20th Century. Sort of a reversal, eh? Part of a reversal of fortune. Here they are, intoning a mantra of change, and they’re more retrograde than the Dole/Kemp ticket of the Stupid Party. The country seems not to be quite that stupid. Stupider, maybe, but not stupid to that precise degree.
I say stupider, because the Dems did indeed go for Obama, last night. He won 13 states to Hillary’s 8, and he won a dozen or so more delegates. How is that not a victory? The Dems could also have to wait for their convention to settle the matter, at which point Edwards and his delegates will matter. That’s creepy. He’d go with Hillary, because of the Kerry betrayal in endorsing Obama. For all that Edwards talks about the Two Americas, he’s as establishment as they get. It’s just rhetoric, see? Just words to feed to the yard chickens before he cuts off their heads.
What a load of hooey. Change change change. And here we are, electing two party establishment apparatchiks. Hillary and McCain. Yes, McCain is establishment -- you can tell by who’s for him. Y’see, there’s the establishment, and there’s the grass roots. Establishment is not, and never is, about conservative values. It’s about the machine and pork spending. Not conservative. You don’t stay in the Senate for decades without being plugged into the system. Romney is rich, but he’s Mormon, which is fringe. He’s a big-time business man, but he’s got a set of values not in accord with Halliburton and Big Oil and whatever other bugaboos control our rightwing thinking.
As for Obama, it’s blacks and the youth vote that puts him on top -- that's not the establishment, the entrenched power. The liberal welfare plantation for which he's so eloquent a spokesman has agents, employees ... uh, I suppose I shouldn't say 'slaves' ... that work for the interests of the masters, out of misplaced conviction. And if he’s not establishment, then the establishment must be ... uh, well, the other one. Those other ones, the c’s, will win at the convention, if it comes to that. That’s where the machine is strongest. So I suppose it’s an establishment battle, as they’ve all been, since Carter won. I’m not the prophet around here, but so it seems.
It seems that the decade to come will not be quiescent. We don’t want a backstep into the Nineties. We don’t want an untried orator. We don’t want an erratic, vindictive non-conservative old man.
As I say, interesting days.
J
Monday, February 4, 2008
On a Related Note
Glamorous metrosexual romance novel cover model Fabio 
describes himself as a "testosterone machine" who "used the fashion industry" but "never let them use" him. Despite his lovely hair, he's not at all gay. "Oh my God, I was going through [female] models like crazy." Nowadays, at age 48, he claims to date mostly would-be actresses. "They're always complaining about their work ... this casting or this part they are hoping to get, and I have to say, 'Come on, you're a fucking waitress.' I don't say that, but I think that, you know, because 
I'm a gentleman."
On a related note, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Confederation, has made a Judo instructional DVD. Partnered with World and Olympic Judo Champion Yasuhiro Yamashita, the video will be released in February.
Putin has been a black belt in Judo since his college days, and his physical fitness 
is a significant component in his massive popularity among Russians. 
He is on record as stating that his favorite president is FDR, whom he uses as a role model; FDR, of course, was untroubled by constitutional niceties, as exemplified by his mass internment of American citizens and his attempts to pack the Supreme Court. On a related note, bill clinton appears to have perfected his salute, 
which appears to give him a powerful if oddly positioned erection.
Netherlander Yvo de Boer, chairman of the UN Climate Conference in Bali, broke down into tears at the podium when the Chinese delegate launched into a tirade accusing him of excluding the Chinese from a meeting.
A vote was then suggested to change the chairman's title to "chairperson". Summing up his experience later, de Boer described the conference as "long". He was seated behind a decorative plant displaying large yellow balls -- his testicles, surprising only in their size, which is explained by the fact that they were empty, mostly. On a related note, iguanas
have been observed falling from trees in southern Florida due to a cold snap. The coldblooded creatures just shut down and lose their grip.
The skin of 57 year old Paul Karason of Madera, California, has turned entirely blue.
The condition is known as argyria, and is the result of Karason's 14 year use of colloidal silver as a tonic. Karason did not notice the change until it was quite pronounced. He continues to use the product. On a related note, "the equivalent of a quarter to half a teaspoon of cinnamon given to humans twice a day decreased risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, including glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides, by 10 to 30 percent. ... As an anti-inflammatory agent, cinnamon may be useful in preventing or mitigating arthritis as well as cardiovascular disease. ...cinnamon's ability to block inflammation and enhance insulin function may make it useful in combating [Alzheimer's] as well."
Florida lawmakers are contemplating bumping bestiality up to first-class felony status, after the "rape" and "murder" of "Meg", a pregnant goat. The maximum penalty will be 30 years imprisonment for anyone having sexual contact with an animal. On a related note, German officials are horrified at the disappearance of two polar bear cubs from the Nuremberg Zoo. The cubs seem to have been eaten by their mother.
After severely injuring himself by plummeting off a 40-foot wall while escaping from the Pueblo County jail, Scott Gomez Jr is suing the state of Colorado. He bases his complaint on the claim that guards should have done more to prevent him from the attempt. His suit states that guards "did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and that the plaintiff could not escape." On a related note, Utah inmate Michael Polk has sued for the right to practice the Asatru faith, based on the worship of ancient Norse gods. The felon claims that to fully exercise his constitutional right, he requires a wood and boar-skin drum, a mead horn for quaffing wassail, a rune staff and Thor's hammer.
Accused dirty-bomber and convicted felon Jose Padilla
-- whose chosen name is Abdullah al-Muhajir 
-- is suing an administration lawyer for his opinion that harsh treatment of accused terrorists is legally permissible. Padilla is appealing his 17-year conviction, as is the Justice Department -- the former claiming the sentence is too harsh, the latter that it is too lenient. On a related note, one-third of moslem Arabs are illiterate. Of these 100 million, seventy-five percent are between 21 and 45 years of age. Half of all Arab women are illiterate.
The recent corrupt election in Kenya -- after which election commissioners failed to turn in their tallies, turning off their cell phones and making themselves unavailable for up to 36 hours -- has provided an excuse for tribal violence to erupt. The Luos, rivals to the Kikuyu tribe of President Kibaki, have taken to randomly murdering women and children. In once instance, up to 50 Kikuyu men, women and children were locked inside a church which was then burned to the ground. On a related note, Liberian warlord Gen. Butt Naked
has apologized to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his actions during the long civil war, which lasted from 1989 to 2003. Butt Naked, whose birth name is Joshua Milton Blahyi, received his moniker from his custom of wearing only army boots when he and his drug-addicted troops ran into villages where they would slaughter all the children and eat their hearts; the troops were renowned for using severed heads as soccer balls and for sacrificing children before every battle to receive magical protection. In all, they killed 20,000 villagers. "Every time I tell people my story," says the former general, "I feel relieved." Mr. Naked now lives in Ghana, where he works as a 
Christian minister.
J
describes himself as a "testosterone machine" who "used the fashion industry" but "never let them use" him. Despite his lovely hair, he's not at all gay. "Oh my God, I was going through [female] models like crazy." Nowadays, at age 48, he claims to date mostly would-be actresses. "They're always complaining about their work ... this casting or this part they are hoping to get, and I have to say, 'Come on, you're a fucking waitress.' I don't say that, but I think that, you know, because 
I'm a gentleman."On a related note, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Confederation, has made a Judo instructional DVD. Partnered with World and Olympic Judo Champion Yasuhiro Yamashita, the video will be released in February.
Putin has been a black belt in Judo since his college days, and his physical fitness 
is a significant component in his massive popularity among Russians. 
He is on record as stating that his favorite president is FDR, whom he uses as a role model; FDR, of course, was untroubled by constitutional niceties, as exemplified by his mass internment of American citizens and his attempts to pack the Supreme Court. On a related note, bill clinton appears to have perfected his salute, which appears to give him a powerful if oddly positioned erection.Netherlander Yvo de Boer, chairman of the UN Climate Conference in Bali, broke down into tears at the podium when the Chinese delegate launched into a tirade accusing him of excluding the Chinese from a meeting.
A vote was then suggested to change the chairman's title to "chairperson". Summing up his experience later, de Boer described the conference as "long". He was seated behind a decorative plant displaying large yellow balls -- his testicles, surprising only in their size, which is explained by the fact that they were empty, mostly. On a related note, iguanas
have been observed falling from trees in southern Florida due to a cold snap. The coldblooded creatures just shut down and lose their grip.The skin of 57 year old Paul Karason of Madera, California, has turned entirely blue.
The condition is known as argyria, and is the result of Karason's 14 year use of colloidal silver as a tonic. Karason did not notice the change until it was quite pronounced. He continues to use the product. On a related note, "the equivalent of a quarter to half a teaspoon of cinnamon given to humans twice a day decreased risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, including glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides, by 10 to 30 percent. ... As an anti-inflammatory agent, cinnamon may be useful in preventing or mitigating arthritis as well as cardiovascular disease. ...cinnamon's ability to block inflammation and enhance insulin function may make it useful in combating [Alzheimer's] as well."Florida lawmakers are contemplating bumping bestiality up to first-class felony status, after the "rape" and "murder" of "Meg", a pregnant goat. The maximum penalty will be 30 years imprisonment for anyone having sexual contact with an animal. On a related note, German officials are horrified at the disappearance of two polar bear cubs from the Nuremberg Zoo. The cubs seem to have been eaten by their mother.
After severely injuring himself by plummeting off a 40-foot wall while escaping from the Pueblo County jail, Scott Gomez Jr is suing the state of Colorado. He bases his complaint on the claim that guards should have done more to prevent him from the attempt. His suit states that guards "did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and that the plaintiff could not escape." On a related note, Utah inmate Michael Polk has sued for the right to practice the Asatru faith, based on the worship of ancient Norse gods. The felon claims that to fully exercise his constitutional right, he requires a wood and boar-skin drum, a mead horn for quaffing wassail, a rune staff and Thor's hammer.
Accused dirty-bomber and convicted felon Jose Padilla
-- whose chosen name is Abdullah al-Muhajir -- is suing an administration lawyer for his opinion that harsh treatment of accused terrorists is legally permissible. Padilla is appealing his 17-year conviction, as is the Justice Department -- the former claiming the sentence is too harsh, the latter that it is too lenient. On a related note, one-third of moslem Arabs are illiterate. Of these 100 million, seventy-five percent are between 21 and 45 years of age. Half of all Arab women are illiterate.The recent corrupt election in Kenya -- after which election commissioners failed to turn in their tallies, turning off their cell phones and making themselves unavailable for up to 36 hours -- has provided an excuse for tribal violence to erupt. The Luos, rivals to the Kikuyu tribe of President Kibaki, have taken to randomly murdering women and children. In once instance, up to 50 Kikuyu men, women and children were locked inside a church which was then burned to the ground. On a related note, Liberian warlord Gen. Butt Naked
has apologized to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for his actions during the long civil war, which lasted from 1989 to 2003. Butt Naked, whose birth name is Joshua Milton Blahyi, received his moniker from his custom of wearing only army boots when he and his drug-addicted troops ran into villages where they would slaughter all the children and eat their hearts; the troops were renowned for using severed heads as soccer balls and for sacrificing children before every battle to receive magical protection. In all, they killed 20,000 villagers. "Every time I tell people my story," says the former general, "I feel relieved." Mr. Naked now lives in Ghana, where he works as a Christian minister.J
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Sprblxlii
I understand there's a sort of sporting contest coming up within the next few weeks. The Superb Bole or somesuch -- the name often changes, with much employment of Latin. Not a Bass Ball sporting event, as many wrongly seem to think. No indeed -- American Foot Ball, rather, a sort of tug-of-war over a leather ovoid object called the "pig", about the size of a severed human head. I am quite expert in the rules of this game, but I realize that most of my readers will have no interest in such frivolities.
Bread and Circus. It's human nature, and there's nothing to be done about it. Certainly no harm in it. Turns out that men do not actually beat up women after the Superb Bole, as the lesbian lobby used to claim. As for the bread, indeed it's being reported that more food is now consumed during this secular holiday than during Thanksgiving. "Food" would have a specialized definition in this context -- something that is put into the mouth and then swallowed. What exactly are pork rinds anyway? My understanding is that it is pig blubber fried in pig lard and sometimes glazed with pig fat. Am I wrong about that? Not by much, if at all. I can't imagine that I could be. I consider myself, and rightly, an expert in the subject.
I am an expert in so many things just like this. Politics, as another example. On the rare occasions that I might be wrong, it's always because of someone else's stupidity. So you can trust me when I express myself. Take the upcoming elections for instance. Obama may well have a chance, if the Dems tap him. It has to do with the hate-meter. So far, he doesn't register. He is ranked as the number one most liberal senator for 2007. Up, or down, from tenth, in the previous year. Did he maneuver himself? One tends to think so. Imagine that, though. More of a lefty than the TiK. Hillary had been ranked about 36th, now at 16th most liberal, as I recall. Also positioning herself to the left. One must service the har ... the MoveOn dot crowd.
But for all his leftitude, Obama isn't at this point about actual positions and policies. He's just a voice emanating from a stage. Safe in the flattering fog of vagueness. Hillary, contrariwise, is loathed. I've never had any emotional issues with her. It's just a matter of respect. I have no respect for her. She's Lady Macbeth, which is a fine thing to be, if it's for a good cause. Ambition and ruthlessness merely for power, however, is pitiful. I don't even feel pity though. I, like bill, don't feel anything for her. But many many conservatives hate her.
Thus, conservatives will come out merely to vote against Hillary, regardless of who the Republican candidate is. McCain won't do? Hillary won't do by orders of magnitude. See? Whereas, if Obama is the nominee, the soft right will stay home -- cool about McCain, and unmoved by Obama. That means a Dem win. General elections are usually decided by the swing voters. But that's only if there's a good showing from both flanks.
McCain and Obama are probably about equal in their general appeal. McCain is old, but he's a "maverick." People like that. Obama is inexperienced, but he's attractive and has a great stage presence. It could break either way, then, except that the hardcore conservatives will stay home. So there you go then.
If the Dems give it to Obama, we'll have the first black, and the most liberal ever, president. That's a very bad thing. It will be a disaster for the country, and for race relations, and for the world. Blacks will side unthinkingly with Obama, and his failed lefty policies will set up a nasty disconnect with reality. Cognitive dissonance is hard to reason with. Jubilation will turn to anger, and if there's one thing we know for certain about the group-think mentality of racial voting blocks, it's that somebody else always gets the blame. If personal responsibility had any place in such groups, the groups wouldn't exist -- the individuals would decide an issue on its merit.
Ah well. It's not my problem. My guy didn't get it. And I already know how vile the world is. Now it's your turn to learn. So tell the lefties they should vote for Hillary. That way McCain will win, and the Republicans will lose in four years, but at least things won't be as bad as they would be otherwise. So it's a good thing.
J
Bread and Circus. It's human nature, and there's nothing to be done about it. Certainly no harm in it. Turns out that men do not actually beat up women after the Superb Bole, as the lesbian lobby used to claim. As for the bread, indeed it's being reported that more food is now consumed during this secular holiday than during Thanksgiving. "Food" would have a specialized definition in this context -- something that is put into the mouth and then swallowed. What exactly are pork rinds anyway? My understanding is that it is pig blubber fried in pig lard and sometimes glazed with pig fat. Am I wrong about that? Not by much, if at all. I can't imagine that I could be. I consider myself, and rightly, an expert in the subject.
I am an expert in so many things just like this. Politics, as another example. On the rare occasions that I might be wrong, it's always because of someone else's stupidity. So you can trust me when I express myself. Take the upcoming elections for instance. Obama may well have a chance, if the Dems tap him. It has to do with the hate-meter. So far, he doesn't register. He is ranked as the number one most liberal senator for 2007. Up, or down, from tenth, in the previous year. Did he maneuver himself? One tends to think so. Imagine that, though. More of a lefty than the TiK. Hillary had been ranked about 36th, now at 16th most liberal, as I recall. Also positioning herself to the left. One must service the har ... the MoveOn dot crowd.
But for all his leftitude, Obama isn't at this point about actual positions and policies. He's just a voice emanating from a stage. Safe in the flattering fog of vagueness. Hillary, contrariwise, is loathed. I've never had any emotional issues with her. It's just a matter of respect. I have no respect for her. She's Lady Macbeth, which is a fine thing to be, if it's for a good cause. Ambition and ruthlessness merely for power, however, is pitiful. I don't even feel pity though. I, like bill, don't feel anything for her. But many many conservatives hate her.
Thus, conservatives will come out merely to vote against Hillary, regardless of who the Republican candidate is. McCain won't do? Hillary won't do by orders of magnitude. See? Whereas, if Obama is the nominee, the soft right will stay home -- cool about McCain, and unmoved by Obama. That means a Dem win. General elections are usually decided by the swing voters. But that's only if there's a good showing from both flanks.
McCain and Obama are probably about equal in their general appeal. McCain is old, but he's a "maverick." People like that. Obama is inexperienced, but he's attractive and has a great stage presence. It could break either way, then, except that the hardcore conservatives will stay home. So there you go then.
If the Dems give it to Obama, we'll have the first black, and the most liberal ever, president. That's a very bad thing. It will be a disaster for the country, and for race relations, and for the world. Blacks will side unthinkingly with Obama, and his failed lefty policies will set up a nasty disconnect with reality. Cognitive dissonance is hard to reason with. Jubilation will turn to anger, and if there's one thing we know for certain about the group-think mentality of racial voting blocks, it's that somebody else always gets the blame. If personal responsibility had any place in such groups, the groups wouldn't exist -- the individuals would decide an issue on its merit.
Ah well. It's not my problem. My guy didn't get it. And I already know how vile the world is. Now it's your turn to learn. So tell the lefties they should vote for Hillary. That way McCain will win, and the Republicans will lose in four years, but at least things won't be as bad as they would be otherwise. So it's a good thing.
J
Friday, February 1, 2008
Eyes Open
We have to be realistic. Idealism gets you ... I was just about to reveal some unpleasant details of my personal history, about the disaster and heart wrenching tragedy that idealism gets you. Idealism gets you nothing but disappointment. There has to be something just as noble but not as stupid as idealism. Maybe the word will come to me. In any case, we have to be realistic. What is politics, after all, if not about living in the real world.
So I expect McCain will be the GOP nominee, and I expect Hillary will be the man the Dems go for. In fact, as things stand, it’s what I would have to hope for, if I am to be realistic. As polls have it at this moment, it’s a virtual tie between either of the Dems and McCain, in a national election. Any other Republican loses in a rout.
For a tiny little while I was thinking that if McCain is the nominee, I’d vote for Hillary. I know, it’s crazy. My reasoning was, she’ll ruin the country enough for the Republicans to hold power for any number of election cycles. Cynical, and too clever by half. Because it’s not about what will happen five and nine and thirteen years from now. It’s what will happen in the controllable future -- insofar as the future is controllable. Too many imponderables confound our sly machinations, and the permutations fade into mist just a few branchings out.
What’s so bad about McCain, that I’d vote for a clinton? I’m the guy who voted for Dukakis. I didn’t think Bush pere was honest. Ah, youth. What’s so bad about McCain is borders. Every living thing has some sort of barrier that protects it from the chaos of the rank environment. When that membrane is pierced, the organism gets infected, or it leaks out its cytoplasm, or some other biologically disastrous or at best highly expensive problem occurs. The United States is the only country in the world the government of which makes no serious attempt to control its borders and the free-flow of aliens.
The invasion sweeping in, almost entirely from Mexico, is understandable. It’s just not desirable. Who would do the jobs these illegals take? Blacks, mostly. However unfortunate it is that there still remains this economic stratification in the US, that is the reality. The reality is that the invasion hurts blacks most. Economically. Who suffers most from the cheap, the illegal labor? They drive wages down, and they drive low-income housing costs up -- simple market forces -- greater demand equals higher prices. Hm.
I won’t go into the lies, about jobs Americans won’t do. What’s important here is that Americans are being hurt, and if a relatively few, rich, guys benefit from the invasion, that in no way justifies it. I don’t understand what’s up with Bush. It’s his great failing, and his disgrace. But he’s old news now. New news is who will be president next, and Romney is the only American of that lot, and he’s not going to get the nomination, as I see it. I'll vote for him, come Tuesday, but my vote hardly ever counts.
Obama is a complete disaster, in terms of the border. If he is black, and has any special, any tribal concern for the black community, he’s a total traitor, a sell-out to the white liberal ideology that has kept blacks in the projects and on drugs for two and three generations. For shame. Hillary at least acknowledges that there is such a thing as an "undocumented worker" (which however disingenuous, is at least a technically accurate description) -- Obama always and only uses the hideous lying euphemism, “immigrants”. May his blood turn to water, for this. Immigrant is a term of law, and requires that certain recognized procedures be performed. It is in no way a synonym for invader.
As for McCain, he sponsored an amnesty bill last year. It’s not technically amnesty? True. There is a very mild fine. More of a bribe, a mordida, really, the way Mexicans are used to doing things. Am I wrong? Well, I’m no longer an idealist. If bribes are what it takes, many will pay them, and accept them. That’s not what is so offensive to me. What offends me -- not in the oh my feelings are hurt sort of way, but to the core -- is the total disregard for the rule of law, which is the only human principle that gives us the little security that we might enjoy.
We have to guard justice jealously, with all our heart and all our strength. Without it, we are savages -- a word so obsolete it’s almost a joke, but I mean it. McCain, for some reason I am incapable of discerning, has tried to establish unjust laws in place of just ones. Was he a hero, in the Vietnam War? He is a traitor, now. What greater job has a patriot to do, than to protect the borders? Patriotism is about nationality, which is about what we have, as opposed to what they have. Foolishly harsh, my word, traitor? You see my reasoning. Am I wrong? Spell it out for me, and keep it simple, cuz I'm not seeing it.
So that’s why it’s all bad. Health care? National health care will be like public schools -- 56% of the “students” in the LA Unified School District drop out. Canadians come here for their health care, unless they want to die in line. Abortion? McCain would be weak, but the Dems are Moloch. Judges? Same deal. Iraq? It’s almost over. The Left wants out? That wouldn’t really necessarily be the disaster it would have been last year. Not that they care. McCain would get it right. The rest of it? It’s just money, higher or lower taxes. Yes it matters. Any wasting to be done, we want to do it ourselves. But that's idealism.
Is McCain a grumpy old foul-mouthed egotist? So am I. Is he stubborn and arrogant? Me too. Will he say “fuck you” to Palestinians leaders or the president of Iran, as he says it to Senate Republican colleagues? That seems like a good thing.
I don’t really believe in miracles. I could have used a few in my time, and never got any. God forgets middle management. He’s great with those little things, like cancer going into remission once in a great while -- rare enough to make it a miracle. And he's great with the big things, like the Battle of Tours and the formation of galaxies. But to find his artistic hand laboring over the the details of the middle distance is unlikely. So it seems to me. In this election, we have to settle for mediocrity, for the wrong wo/man. In a world where Carter could become president, nothing is assured.
Maybe I’m just in a mood though. I have some pretty bad pain between my shoulder blades, and my arm is re-injured. No worries. It’s only pain. Like it’s only borders, and jobs, and the economy and a war against moslem totalitarians. That's all. We can always find a way to make it all seem less important. We can find ways to make reality unimportant. We can always be idealists.
J
So I expect McCain will be the GOP nominee, and I expect Hillary will be the man the Dems go for. In fact, as things stand, it’s what I would have to hope for, if I am to be realistic. As polls have it at this moment, it’s a virtual tie between either of the Dems and McCain, in a national election. Any other Republican loses in a rout.
For a tiny little while I was thinking that if McCain is the nominee, I’d vote for Hillary. I know, it’s crazy. My reasoning was, she’ll ruin the country enough for the Republicans to hold power for any number of election cycles. Cynical, and too clever by half. Because it’s not about what will happen five and nine and thirteen years from now. It’s what will happen in the controllable future -- insofar as the future is controllable. Too many imponderables confound our sly machinations, and the permutations fade into mist just a few branchings out.
What’s so bad about McCain, that I’d vote for a clinton? I’m the guy who voted for Dukakis. I didn’t think Bush pere was honest. Ah, youth. What’s so bad about McCain is borders. Every living thing has some sort of barrier that protects it from the chaos of the rank environment. When that membrane is pierced, the organism gets infected, or it leaks out its cytoplasm, or some other biologically disastrous or at best highly expensive problem occurs. The United States is the only country in the world the government of which makes no serious attempt to control its borders and the free-flow of aliens.
The invasion sweeping in, almost entirely from Mexico, is understandable. It’s just not desirable. Who would do the jobs these illegals take? Blacks, mostly. However unfortunate it is that there still remains this economic stratification in the US, that is the reality. The reality is that the invasion hurts blacks most. Economically. Who suffers most from the cheap, the illegal labor? They drive wages down, and they drive low-income housing costs up -- simple market forces -- greater demand equals higher prices. Hm.
I won’t go into the lies, about jobs Americans won’t do. What’s important here is that Americans are being hurt, and if a relatively few, rich, guys benefit from the invasion, that in no way justifies it. I don’t understand what’s up with Bush. It’s his great failing, and his disgrace. But he’s old news now. New news is who will be president next, and Romney is the only American of that lot, and he’s not going to get the nomination, as I see it. I'll vote for him, come Tuesday, but my vote hardly ever counts.
Obama is a complete disaster, in terms of the border. If he is black, and has any special, any tribal concern for the black community, he’s a total traitor, a sell-out to the white liberal ideology that has kept blacks in the projects and on drugs for two and three generations. For shame. Hillary at least acknowledges that there is such a thing as an "undocumented worker" (which however disingenuous, is at least a technically accurate description) -- Obama always and only uses the hideous lying euphemism, “immigrants”. May his blood turn to water, for this. Immigrant is a term of law, and requires that certain recognized procedures be performed. It is in no way a synonym for invader.
As for McCain, he sponsored an amnesty bill last year. It’s not technically amnesty? True. There is a very mild fine. More of a bribe, a mordida, really, the way Mexicans are used to doing things. Am I wrong? Well, I’m no longer an idealist. If bribes are what it takes, many will pay them, and accept them. That’s not what is so offensive to me. What offends me -- not in the oh my feelings are hurt sort of way, but to the core -- is the total disregard for the rule of law, which is the only human principle that gives us the little security that we might enjoy.
We have to guard justice jealously, with all our heart and all our strength. Without it, we are savages -- a word so obsolete it’s almost a joke, but I mean it. McCain, for some reason I am incapable of discerning, has tried to establish unjust laws in place of just ones. Was he a hero, in the Vietnam War? He is a traitor, now. What greater job has a patriot to do, than to protect the borders? Patriotism is about nationality, which is about what we have, as opposed to what they have. Foolishly harsh, my word, traitor? You see my reasoning. Am I wrong? Spell it out for me, and keep it simple, cuz I'm not seeing it.
So that’s why it’s all bad. Health care? National health care will be like public schools -- 56% of the “students” in the LA Unified School District drop out. Canadians come here for their health care, unless they want to die in line. Abortion? McCain would be weak, but the Dems are Moloch. Judges? Same deal. Iraq? It’s almost over. The Left wants out? That wouldn’t really necessarily be the disaster it would have been last year. Not that they care. McCain would get it right. The rest of it? It’s just money, higher or lower taxes. Yes it matters. Any wasting to be done, we want to do it ourselves. But that's idealism.
Is McCain a grumpy old foul-mouthed egotist? So am I. Is he stubborn and arrogant? Me too. Will he say “fuck you” to Palestinians leaders or the president of Iran, as he says it to Senate Republican colleagues? That seems like a good thing.
I don’t really believe in miracles. I could have used a few in my time, and never got any. God forgets middle management. He’s great with those little things, like cancer going into remission once in a great while -- rare enough to make it a miracle. And he's great with the big things, like the Battle of Tours and the formation of galaxies. But to find his artistic hand laboring over the the details of the middle distance is unlikely. So it seems to me. In this election, we have to settle for mediocrity, for the wrong wo/man. In a world where Carter could become president, nothing is assured.
Maybe I’m just in a mood though. I have some pretty bad pain between my shoulder blades, and my arm is re-injured. No worries. It’s only pain. Like it’s only borders, and jobs, and the economy and a war against moslem totalitarians. That's all. We can always find a way to make it all seem less important. We can find ways to make reality unimportant. We can always be idealists.
J
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Greatest Man Alive
Having some trouble with my connectivity. The online kind. Why would you think I was referring to interpersonal skills? That’s very intrusive and presumptuous of you. Sometimes I feel that the respect and courtesy flow only one way in our relationship. What do you suppose it is in you that must always try to hurt me? Some trauma in your childhood? A substance abuse issue? I’d recommend counseling, but you never listen to me -- never really listen. You make me feel cheap, always putting up with your abuse. But someday things will be different. And yes, you know what I mean. Just what I mean.
So McCain took Florida. That simplifies matters. My guy was Giuliani -- not my ideological choice, but where does ideology get you? Into the concentration camps is where, either as inmate or guard. Anyway, now I can’t be blamed for what happens. It’s not my fault. My guy isn’t making the decisions. It’s a relief, really.
Was Giuliani an idiot for using that strategy? -- of betting all his marbles on Florida? In part it was a result of limited resources, but McCain ran out of funds and kept going. It was a gamble that he lost. So goes it. I wanted him because he was such a great mayor. That doesn’t mean he was a great politician, or a great campaign planner. No, they are not essential skills for great leadership. Look at bill clinton.
clinton was a fantastic politician -- whatever it is that such a thing is. I say “was” a great politician. Now he can’t open his mouth without receiving oral sex. And you know what I mean. Don’t make me draw a picture. Is he doing it on purpose? Being a master of psychology as I am, I feel fully qualified to inform you that there are dark forces working in that man’s soul, such as it is. And you know what I mean. It’s almost like he’s trying to lose. Lose for his wife. It’s complex. You’d think he’d be able to bridle himself enough to get back into the White House. But he’s not renowned for his self-control, or his judgment.
His political talent -- one can hardly call it a skill -- must have been entirely intuitive. Intuition is so very subject to unconscious forces. He can’t help himself. Like a few days ago when he explained away Hillary’s loss in South Caroline by saying jesse jackson had won that state in ’84 and ’88. You know, like, because jackson is a colored man, see? Just like Obama is, a colored man. Giddit? Them South Carolinians go for the coloreds. If it were the first time, or if it were rare, it would be nothing. It’s a pattern. So much for clinton being the first black president. He’s only black when he’s actually in power. The rest of the time he’s just a good old boy with a knack for slapping backs, or whatever his political talent is. I’ll get back to you on that -- I don’t want to think about it right now.
As for Giuliani, his skill was in getting fantastic results. We really could have used that. As it seems now, we’ll get these … not second-raters, but run-of-the-millers. McCain is unremarkable. In terms of leadership or desirable achievements. A phenomenal character, what with that Hanoi Hilton thing 40 years ago. I’d want him as my commanding officer if I were a POW. The United States is not a POW. We need other virtues in our leaders than an iron will to not yield to torture. I should say, we need additional virtues.
He’s like Bob Dole in ’96. His time has come -- he’s earned it. Except his time did not come, and being a party loyalist doesn’t earn anything exceptional, and certainly not the highest position of power in the world. I’m speaking of both Dole and McCain, here, except that McCain is not even a party loyalist. (When I saw those two old white men, Dole and Kemp, I just knew clinton would win. But remember, the only reason clinton won, either time, was that Perot siphoned off more votes from the right than from the left.)
But I was talking about Giuliani. Of the lot, he’s earned it, by his record. Hillary? We’ve been over that dusty old road -- I’m using a metaphor. Obama? Phenomenal speaker. He’s a phobamanon. But inspiration doesn’t get a job done. Doing the job gets it done. What has Obama actually done? -- that’s not just personal resume stuff, I mean. He’s an accomplished individual. That’s as much as to say nothing. What we want is accomplished accomplishments. He should have run for governor. That’s a track record we could gauge and be impressed with, or not.
Somebody asked me that if it came down to it, who’d I chose, Obama or Hillary. Of course Obama. He couldn’t be worse than Hillary, and he might be better. But it will be Hillary. That machine. I’d hope I’m wrong -- cuz she’s double-dipping. And think about the damage those two are doing, the clintons. They made it about race, and of course about gender. I don’t know it, but I’d expect it’s annoyed a fair number of blacks. It’s cheap. It’s ugly and wrong. How will she lure the blacks back onto the Democrat plantation? Obama as VP. I do think he’d take it -- it’s the national platform he wants for his own chance. Bush pere did it. If Obama does win the nomination, Hillary brings nothing to the ticket. Someone was saying he should choose Richardson, who is, despite the name, somehow Hispanic. The big point was that Hispanics won’t vote for a black man. I don’t know. I vote for ideas and capabilities, not for melanin or genital configuration.
To default position then. Romney. At least he's pretty. He wasn't a bad governor. It's just that he's just another politician -- an ambitious, self-seeking egoist who imagines he's the man to lead the world. Haven't we seen enough of that?
King George III was raving about having lost the Colonies, and about how angry he was with George Washington. He said something to the effect that Washington would regret his power -- the crown does not rest lightly on any man's head. An adviser told the king that Washington planned to disband the American army and return to private life. George III started visibly, and said in an amazed and awed voice, "If he does that, he is the greatest man alive."
Crowns are bitter, but power is sweet. We need leaders who are not about appetite.
J
So McCain took Florida. That simplifies matters. My guy was Giuliani -- not my ideological choice, but where does ideology get you? Into the concentration camps is where, either as inmate or guard. Anyway, now I can’t be blamed for what happens. It’s not my fault. My guy isn’t making the decisions. It’s a relief, really.
Was Giuliani an idiot for using that strategy? -- of betting all his marbles on Florida? In part it was a result of limited resources, but McCain ran out of funds and kept going. It was a gamble that he lost. So goes it. I wanted him because he was such a great mayor. That doesn’t mean he was a great politician, or a great campaign planner. No, they are not essential skills for great leadership. Look at bill clinton.
clinton was a fantastic politician -- whatever it is that such a thing is. I say “was” a great politician. Now he can’t open his mouth without receiving oral sex. And you know what I mean. Don’t make me draw a picture. Is he doing it on purpose? Being a master of psychology as I am, I feel fully qualified to inform you that there are dark forces working in that man’s soul, such as it is. And you know what I mean. It’s almost like he’s trying to lose. Lose for his wife. It’s complex. You’d think he’d be able to bridle himself enough to get back into the White House. But he’s not renowned for his self-control, or his judgment.
His political talent -- one can hardly call it a skill -- must have been entirely intuitive. Intuition is so very subject to unconscious forces. He can’t help himself. Like a few days ago when he explained away Hillary’s loss in South Caroline by saying jesse jackson had won that state in ’84 and ’88. You know, like, because jackson is a colored man, see? Just like Obama is, a colored man. Giddit? Them South Carolinians go for the coloreds. If it were the first time, or if it were rare, it would be nothing. It’s a pattern. So much for clinton being the first black president. He’s only black when he’s actually in power. The rest of the time he’s just a good old boy with a knack for slapping backs, or whatever his political talent is. I’ll get back to you on that -- I don’t want to think about it right now.
As for Giuliani, his skill was in getting fantastic results. We really could have used that. As it seems now, we’ll get these … not second-raters, but run-of-the-millers. McCain is unremarkable. In terms of leadership or desirable achievements. A phenomenal character, what with that Hanoi Hilton thing 40 years ago. I’d want him as my commanding officer if I were a POW. The United States is not a POW. We need other virtues in our leaders than an iron will to not yield to torture. I should say, we need additional virtues.
He’s like Bob Dole in ’96. His time has come -- he’s earned it. Except his time did not come, and being a party loyalist doesn’t earn anything exceptional, and certainly not the highest position of power in the world. I’m speaking of both Dole and McCain, here, except that McCain is not even a party loyalist. (When I saw those two old white men, Dole and Kemp, I just knew clinton would win. But remember, the only reason clinton won, either time, was that Perot siphoned off more votes from the right than from the left.)
But I was talking about Giuliani. Of the lot, he’s earned it, by his record. Hillary? We’ve been over that dusty old road -- I’m using a metaphor. Obama? Phenomenal speaker. He’s a phobamanon. But inspiration doesn’t get a job done. Doing the job gets it done. What has Obama actually done? -- that’s not just personal resume stuff, I mean. He’s an accomplished individual. That’s as much as to say nothing. What we want is accomplished accomplishments. He should have run for governor. That’s a track record we could gauge and be impressed with, or not.
Somebody asked me that if it came down to it, who’d I chose, Obama or Hillary. Of course Obama. He couldn’t be worse than Hillary, and he might be better. But it will be Hillary. That machine. I’d hope I’m wrong -- cuz she’s double-dipping. And think about the damage those two are doing, the clintons. They made it about race, and of course about gender. I don’t know it, but I’d expect it’s annoyed a fair number of blacks. It’s cheap. It’s ugly and wrong. How will she lure the blacks back onto the Democrat plantation? Obama as VP. I do think he’d take it -- it’s the national platform he wants for his own chance. Bush pere did it. If Obama does win the nomination, Hillary brings nothing to the ticket. Someone was saying he should choose Richardson, who is, despite the name, somehow Hispanic. The big point was that Hispanics won’t vote for a black man. I don’t know. I vote for ideas and capabilities, not for melanin or genital configuration.
To default position then. Romney. At least he's pretty. He wasn't a bad governor. It's just that he's just another politician -- an ambitious, self-seeking egoist who imagines he's the man to lead the world. Haven't we seen enough of that?
King George III was raving about having lost the Colonies, and about how angry he was with George Washington. He said something to the effect that Washington would regret his power -- the crown does not rest lightly on any man's head. An adviser told the king that Washington planned to disband the American army and return to private life. George III started visibly, and said in an amazed and awed voice, "If he does that, he is the greatest man alive."
Crowns are bitter, but power is sweet. We need leaders who are not about appetite.
J
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Anti-Islamic Activities
Mark Steyn informs us that the British government is relabeling moslem terrorism as "anti-Islamic activity". Hm. He likens this to "the Luftwaffe raining down death and destruction on Londoners during the Blitz" and calling it an "anti-German activity." Well? He is correct, of course. The more mollifying part of our souls wants to point out that the bloody conflicts and atrocities committed between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, although in some way associated with religion, were in no way Christian. Perhaps the same could be said of Islam's excesses?
Islam as the Religion of Peace, however, is a debatable proposition. Christianity undoubtedly has as its Lord the Prince of Peace. There is only one Christian war, and that is the long one led by Christ when he returns with a sword to vanquish the Antichrist, and a thousand years later his demiurge Satan. All other bloody conflict can only be secular, whatever the labels. Islam however is a quadruped of a different color -- green, one would suppose.
Its adherents are urged to violence. Its founder was no prince of peace. It divides the world into two Houses, of Submission and of War. The s-l-m of Islam and of Moslem do indeed share a Semitic root with salaam, peace -- but it is the peace of acquiescence. Unbelievers are an affront to Allah, and must be taxed, converted or slain; one would suppose enslaved is an acceptable alternative to killed -- slavery after all is still a thriving institution in the hinterlands of Islam. The upshot is that the starting proposition, that violence is an "anti-Islamic activity", is highly debatable on grounds both historic and doctrinal.
Thus, the essential point: religions are observed by humans, who must be flawed. Their observances will be imperfect, and often untrue to the original tenets. Mass madness can sweep over any population. We must make our distinctions then based not only on human conduct, but on original teachings. All ethical faiths must urge moral conduct. Morality is a cultural norm, however, and may be a perversion of natural law. If we examine the core teachings of Islam and of Christianity, do we find agreement or conflict?
We can ignore the theological issues. A god who is an absolute unity, or a God who manifests as a triunity -- who's to say? God as a capricious being, limited not even by his own nature? -- or an all-powerful God for whom there are impossibilities? Not both can be correct. Both might be wrong. But such ideas are irrelevant, regarding violent conduct between people and populations. We can best concern ourselves with what religions have to say about how to treat one another.
Jesus says that in his name brother will stand against brother; he is not telling them to do so -- he's saying that they will do so. Human nature. Mohammad says to cut off the heads of infidels. Not much room for interpretation, there. Jesus looked forward to the day he would receive his kingdom. Mohammad led military assaults on caravans and cities. We need not multiply examples -- the issue is clear.
Does Islam teach that jets should be flown into skyscrapers? Does it teach anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a justification for such actions? I think not. Evil men corrupt morality. For all that it was founded in violence, Islam itself may be separated from such direct actions. But why the silence? Why the cowardice? Why is there not a great outcry, a mass and unequivocal uprising against such atrocities? Why is there always some qualifier? -- a 'yes it is wrong, but...'?
Because infidels are made for killing. As long as that is a truth of Islam, its footprints will be bloody. Terrorism is not an anti-Islamic activity. Beheading is terrifying, and it is meant not just as an act of instant Divine justice, but as a coercive admonition to other infidels, that they must submit. Terrorism has a point. It has a missionary function. It is a kind of sermon. The theological error of Osama is not in his tactics, but in his targets. Bystanders and wayfarers are to be protected, under traditional Islamic law. Osama and his ilk violate this custom, and are thus outlaws. If they attack military bases and government facilities, they would be on solid ground. Islam is a militant faith not just historically or through rhetoric. It is militant by definition.
The British double talk about terrorism is nothing but shameful. As Steyn says, to call moslem terrorism "anti-Islamic activity" is not merely "self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you."
Men do not flatter and apologize to criminals. Men stand up and speak the truth and resist evil. Sorry to be so obvious. It's just necessary sometimes to be really clear. As if we were speaking to little children, afraid, say, of monsters under the bed. There are no monsters under the bed. There are no monsters. There are only people, who act like monsters.
J
Islam as the Religion of Peace, however, is a debatable proposition. Christianity undoubtedly has as its Lord the Prince of Peace. There is only one Christian war, and that is the long one led by Christ when he returns with a sword to vanquish the Antichrist, and a thousand years later his demiurge Satan. All other bloody conflict can only be secular, whatever the labels. Islam however is a quadruped of a different color -- green, one would suppose.
Its adherents are urged to violence. Its founder was no prince of peace. It divides the world into two Houses, of Submission and of War. The s-l-m of Islam and of Moslem do indeed share a Semitic root with salaam, peace -- but it is the peace of acquiescence. Unbelievers are an affront to Allah, and must be taxed, converted or slain; one would suppose enslaved is an acceptable alternative to killed -- slavery after all is still a thriving institution in the hinterlands of Islam. The upshot is that the starting proposition, that violence is an "anti-Islamic activity", is highly debatable on grounds both historic and doctrinal.
Thus, the essential point: religions are observed by humans, who must be flawed. Their observances will be imperfect, and often untrue to the original tenets. Mass madness can sweep over any population. We must make our distinctions then based not only on human conduct, but on original teachings. All ethical faiths must urge moral conduct. Morality is a cultural norm, however, and may be a perversion of natural law. If we examine the core teachings of Islam and of Christianity, do we find agreement or conflict?
We can ignore the theological issues. A god who is an absolute unity, or a God who manifests as a triunity -- who's to say? God as a capricious being, limited not even by his own nature? -- or an all-powerful God for whom there are impossibilities? Not both can be correct. Both might be wrong. But such ideas are irrelevant, regarding violent conduct between people and populations. We can best concern ourselves with what religions have to say about how to treat one another.
Jesus says that in his name brother will stand against brother; he is not telling them to do so -- he's saying that they will do so. Human nature. Mohammad says to cut off the heads of infidels. Not much room for interpretation, there. Jesus looked forward to the day he would receive his kingdom. Mohammad led military assaults on caravans and cities. We need not multiply examples -- the issue is clear.
Does Islam teach that jets should be flown into skyscrapers? Does it teach anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a justification for such actions? I think not. Evil men corrupt morality. For all that it was founded in violence, Islam itself may be separated from such direct actions. But why the silence? Why the cowardice? Why is there not a great outcry, a mass and unequivocal uprising against such atrocities? Why is there always some qualifier? -- a 'yes it is wrong, but...'?
Because infidels are made for killing. As long as that is a truth of Islam, its footprints will be bloody. Terrorism is not an anti-Islamic activity. Beheading is terrifying, and it is meant not just as an act of instant Divine justice, but as a coercive admonition to other infidels, that they must submit. Terrorism has a point. It has a missionary function. It is a kind of sermon. The theological error of Osama is not in his tactics, but in his targets. Bystanders and wayfarers are to be protected, under traditional Islamic law. Osama and his ilk violate this custom, and are thus outlaws. If they attack military bases and government facilities, they would be on solid ground. Islam is a militant faith not just historically or through rhetoric. It is militant by definition.
The British double talk about terrorism is nothing but shameful. As Steyn says, to call moslem terrorism "anti-Islamic activity" is not merely "self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you."
Men do not flatter and apologize to criminals. Men stand up and speak the truth and resist evil. Sorry to be so obvious. It's just necessary sometimes to be really clear. As if we were speaking to little children, afraid, say, of monsters under the bed. There are no monsters under the bed. There are no monsters. There are only people, who act like monsters.
J
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Imprimatur
So I’ve been rolling with my son this week … grappling … Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It’s the most time I’ve spent with him since he was a teenager. Early teens, in fact. I get him, which can’t be all that easy for him to bear. He’s used to winning. He understands of course that the little that he’s been able to roll has been with guys that he has been teaching. As I say, winning makes you stupid. He’s not stupid, but he is used to winning. So he admits to getting frustrated, but he also affirms that there’s a part of him that needs to lose. It’s how you learn to win. As opposed to just winning, as I do, because of my body type.
As for me, I’m afraid of his elbows. He’s rough. Uses a lot of strength, and speed. It’s impressive. But he’s not gentle. And as we were rolling, I did find myself getting aggressive. It’s how I respond eventually to being muscled around. Interesting. I’ve been so patient with the guys I roll with, but there’s something going on, with my son. A twinge of impatience. I talked with him later about it. Some sort of father-son thing, that I don’t quite understand.
The obvious thing is that I will not, I will not go gentle into that good night. I will eventually be supplanted. But not today, and not easily. Yes, I do have an ego, even as a father. And there is still a bit of that sense of ownership. I want him to be the way I want him to be. He’s his own man, though. Honestly, that’s got some convolutions to it.
He rolls mostly with me. I am, after all, pretty tough. He rolled with M, the brown belt, and was dominated. M is impossible. But my son liked it. Lots of lessons, and he’s there to learn. Last night he rolled with R, another brown belt, for quite a while. Fifteen, twenty minutes. I managed to see the ending -- my boy got a really sweet arm bar. I can’t move like that. R is, as I’ve said, an admirable character. I’m sure he has it, but I’ve never seen ego from him.
I do know there’s some talk about my son, being rough. He’s teachable though. Not out of control. He comes from the most macho place in the world: the US military. A little adjustment period is to be expected. He’s a level-headed guy … I can’t bring myself to call him a kid.
So there it is. I’m competitive, and protective. I’m proud of him, and impatient. The lesson for me, which I already know and have known for years and years -- before he came into existence -- is that our children are gifts entrusted to our care for a time by God. They are not our children. They are God’s children, that he wants us to love. They are their own people, and have worth independent of us parents, and they have wills and ambitions that should be nurtured and guided, lest they be perverted and crippled. We are told to honor our fathers and our mothers. But we are told that same thing, regarding our children. Provoke not your children to wrath.
I miss the little boy he was, because I loved to sweep him up into my arms and hug him. That was so simple. Now it’s more complex. Sort of the difference between a pet and a person. That’s okay. It’s better than okay. It’s good. My son left me as a teenager and returned as a grown man. A man, mind you, whom people have actively tried to kill in open combat. Do you even know anyone like that? He looks up to me, still, because he knows the best part of my character. But he’s twice the man I am. Yes, I’m proud. I’m proud of myself, for raising him well, and I’m proud of him, for being honorable, and excellent, and admirable.
I said that I win because of my body type. That’s true, insofar as it goes. But I win because of my character. I have worked harder than others have worked. I have eaten better, for three decades, than others do. I have exercised more intelligently. I have overcome the barrier of age and the handicap of having a rather stupid physical-brain. There is nobody of any size and of similar experience who dominates me. I dominate, and hold my own against those who are sixty and eighty pounds heavier than me. I did this, by working very hard, through the pain and the ache that would keep most men at home. And why?
Because I have a son. For whom I must be an example. So that he can be proud, as I am proud of him.
There are no secrets. When the dark things are brought to light, we’d better have something to balance the judgments. Right? And this, this, this is what will justify us. Love. The hidden things will be made known. But love covers a multitude of sins.
J
As for me, I’m afraid of his elbows. He’s rough. Uses a lot of strength, and speed. It’s impressive. But he’s not gentle. And as we were rolling, I did find myself getting aggressive. It’s how I respond eventually to being muscled around. Interesting. I’ve been so patient with the guys I roll with, but there’s something going on, with my son. A twinge of impatience. I talked with him later about it. Some sort of father-son thing, that I don’t quite understand.
The obvious thing is that I will not, I will not go gentle into that good night. I will eventually be supplanted. But not today, and not easily. Yes, I do have an ego, even as a father. And there is still a bit of that sense of ownership. I want him to be the way I want him to be. He’s his own man, though. Honestly, that’s got some convolutions to it.
He rolls mostly with me. I am, after all, pretty tough. He rolled with M, the brown belt, and was dominated. M is impossible. But my son liked it. Lots of lessons, and he’s there to learn. Last night he rolled with R, another brown belt, for quite a while. Fifteen, twenty minutes. I managed to see the ending -- my boy got a really sweet arm bar. I can’t move like that. R is, as I’ve said, an admirable character. I’m sure he has it, but I’ve never seen ego from him.
I do know there’s some talk about my son, being rough. He’s teachable though. Not out of control. He comes from the most macho place in the world: the US military. A little adjustment period is to be expected. He’s a level-headed guy … I can’t bring myself to call him a kid.
So there it is. I’m competitive, and protective. I’m proud of him, and impatient. The lesson for me, which I already know and have known for years and years -- before he came into existence -- is that our children are gifts entrusted to our care for a time by God. They are not our children. They are God’s children, that he wants us to love. They are their own people, and have worth independent of us parents, and they have wills and ambitions that should be nurtured and guided, lest they be perverted and crippled. We are told to honor our fathers and our mothers. But we are told that same thing, regarding our children. Provoke not your children to wrath.
I miss the little boy he was, because I loved to sweep him up into my arms and hug him. That was so simple. Now it’s more complex. Sort of the difference between a pet and a person. That’s okay. It’s better than okay. It’s good. My son left me as a teenager and returned as a grown man. A man, mind you, whom people have actively tried to kill in open combat. Do you even know anyone like that? He looks up to me, still, because he knows the best part of my character. But he’s twice the man I am. Yes, I’m proud. I’m proud of myself, for raising him well, and I’m proud of him, for being honorable, and excellent, and admirable.
I said that I win because of my body type. That’s true, insofar as it goes. But I win because of my character. I have worked harder than others have worked. I have eaten better, for three decades, than others do. I have exercised more intelligently. I have overcome the barrier of age and the handicap of having a rather stupid physical-brain. There is nobody of any size and of similar experience who dominates me. I dominate, and hold my own against those who are sixty and eighty pounds heavier than me. I did this, by working very hard, through the pain and the ache that would keep most men at home. And why?
Because I have a son. For whom I must be an example. So that he can be proud, as I am proud of him.
There are no secrets. When the dark things are brought to light, we’d better have something to balance the judgments. Right? And this, this, this is what will justify us. Love. The hidden things will be made known. But love covers a multitude of sins.
J
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Roe v. Dred Scot
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior Day and National Abortion Commemoration Day are almost the same day. Isn’t that odd?
No, it isn’t. The Freakenomics guys pointed out a curious trend. Crime rates started to fall dramatically precisely one generation after abortion became wide-spread and legal in the United States.
Who is it that gets aborted? Or should I be politically correct, and say “what” is it? Mostly minorities. Minority babies. Or should I say minority “fetuses”.
What does such a factoid mean? That the socially conservative policies enacted during the Eighties -- three strikes and zero tolerance and suchlike -- were effective? Or that the criminals who would have been committing those absent crimes had been proactively executed, in the womb.
My vast conservative readership will already know it, but for the growing throng of liberals who flock to these pages out of their great craving for lucidity and gentleness, I will observe that the driving force behind the legalization of abortion was Margaret Sanger. And her major impetus, the reason for her social conscience, was eugenics. Eugenics, for my younger readers, is that school of social thought that would improve the general tone of mankind by killing its inferior representatives. Popular in the early Twentieth Century, reaching its highest expression during the Third Reich. Jews, Gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, mental defectives, syphilitics, Africans. You know, inferiors. This, per Hitler and Sanger.
There was a time when I had the statistics at my finger tips. Another decade. But it’s mostly black babies who get aborted. I have several times made the connection, here. Between abortion and slavery. Fetuses and blacks -- the two groups who aren’t human. Not fully human, if human at all. The Dred Scot decision formulated the idea: a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to honor. Roe v. Wade reiterated it. I don’t actually have a quote for it. It’s just that it’s okay to kill babies. You won’t remember Chief Justice Taney. Or even Chief Justice Warren. The two moral giants behind these two equivalent pieces of judicial legislation. But isn’t it funny, how it’s the blacks, again, who enjoy the full benefit of such decisions?
We might speculate what old time heroes JFK and King would make of what happened to their movements and parties. Kennedy would be a mainstream conservative Republican today. Lower taxes, strong national defense, compassion from government. King would not recognize the torchbearers of his legacy. The hideous reverend jesse jackson, with his extortions and self-seeking and policies of division, would have been an abomination to King. King was a Bible-based preacher, who viewed abortion as the killing of a baby. I suggest that if the great issue of his day were not civil rights -- let’s suppose equality had been achieved -- King would have marched for the unborn.
Whom did he side with, after all? The powerful? The privileged? Or with those who have no voice? Dogs and firehoses are bad enough. It is an affront to every honorable man to benefit from such conditions, silently. We must stand up and speak out and put ourselves in harms way if need be, to stop grotesque injustice. I speak as a hypocrite now. But King was not a hypocrite -- not so that we’d know it. He had his human failings and all, but we do not require perfection. We need courage. And he had that.
Where is our courage? Where is our hero? There are only victims. We stand, silently watching.
As for all those dead black babies who aren’t committing their crimes, Sanger was obviously correct. Society is better off. Who else can we kill early?
On the other hand, maybe if black families were actually families, like with a father, the way it used to be before government social programs destroyed the black community, maybe love rather than death would prove to be an effective preventative measure against crime.
But that's just too simplistic -- an unthinking, unsophisticated conservative answer that requires sacrifice and commitment. I must be wrong.
On an entirely unrelated note, famed liberal actor Heath Ledger was found today dead in his Manhattan apartment amid a scatter of pills. He had a tattoo on his back -- "Fuck the World."
J
No, it isn’t. The Freakenomics guys pointed out a curious trend. Crime rates started to fall dramatically precisely one generation after abortion became wide-spread and legal in the United States.
Who is it that gets aborted? Or should I be politically correct, and say “what” is it? Mostly minorities. Minority babies. Or should I say minority “fetuses”.
What does such a factoid mean? That the socially conservative policies enacted during the Eighties -- three strikes and zero tolerance and suchlike -- were effective? Or that the criminals who would have been committing those absent crimes had been proactively executed, in the womb.
My vast conservative readership will already know it, but for the growing throng of liberals who flock to these pages out of their great craving for lucidity and gentleness, I will observe that the driving force behind the legalization of abortion was Margaret Sanger. And her major impetus, the reason for her social conscience, was eugenics. Eugenics, for my younger readers, is that school of social thought that would improve the general tone of mankind by killing its inferior representatives. Popular in the early Twentieth Century, reaching its highest expression during the Third Reich. Jews, Gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, mental defectives, syphilitics, Africans. You know, inferiors. This, per Hitler and Sanger.
There was a time when I had the statistics at my finger tips. Another decade. But it’s mostly black babies who get aborted. I have several times made the connection, here. Between abortion and slavery. Fetuses and blacks -- the two groups who aren’t human. Not fully human, if human at all. The Dred Scot decision formulated the idea: a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to honor. Roe v. Wade reiterated it. I don’t actually have a quote for it. It’s just that it’s okay to kill babies. You won’t remember Chief Justice Taney. Or even Chief Justice Warren. The two moral giants behind these two equivalent pieces of judicial legislation. But isn’t it funny, how it’s the blacks, again, who enjoy the full benefit of such decisions?
We might speculate what old time heroes JFK and King would make of what happened to their movements and parties. Kennedy would be a mainstream conservative Republican today. Lower taxes, strong national defense, compassion from government. King would not recognize the torchbearers of his legacy. The hideous reverend jesse jackson, with his extortions and self-seeking and policies of division, would have been an abomination to King. King was a Bible-based preacher, who viewed abortion as the killing of a baby. I suggest that if the great issue of his day were not civil rights -- let’s suppose equality had been achieved -- King would have marched for the unborn.
Whom did he side with, after all? The powerful? The privileged? Or with those who have no voice? Dogs and firehoses are bad enough. It is an affront to every honorable man to benefit from such conditions, silently. We must stand up and speak out and put ourselves in harms way if need be, to stop grotesque injustice. I speak as a hypocrite now. But King was not a hypocrite -- not so that we’d know it. He had his human failings and all, but we do not require perfection. We need courage. And he had that.
Where is our courage? Where is our hero? There are only victims. We stand, silently watching.
As for all those dead black babies who aren’t committing their crimes, Sanger was obviously correct. Society is better off. Who else can we kill early?
On the other hand, maybe if black families were actually families, like with a father, the way it used to be before government social programs destroyed the black community, maybe love rather than death would prove to be an effective preventative measure against crime.
But that's just too simplistic -- an unthinking, unsophisticated conservative answer that requires sacrifice and commitment. I must be wrong.
On an entirely unrelated note, famed liberal actor Heath Ledger was found today dead in his Manhattan apartment amid a scatter of pills. He had a tattoo on his back -- "Fuck the World."
J
Sunday, January 20, 2008
I Want to Become President
As all informed readers will know, Forgotten Prophets™ is renowned for the unmatched quality of its Investigative Reporting. Our corporate trophy room is filled to overflowing with Pulitzer Prizes, Newberry Awards and suchlike. It was therefore merely a matter of time before we uncovered the document -- Obama's kindergarten essay that outlined the grand scheme of his life's plan.
Before we reproduce the text, a few words about the investigative process are in order. The essay's existence first came to light when operatives for the Hillary presidential campaign interviewed the teacher of Obama when he was five years old in Indonesia. She recalled that Obama had written an essay which he blatantly titled "I Want to Become President".
Hillary's agents managed to coax similar memories from the aged pedagogue regarding the literary efforts of the precocious Barack. Other essay titles that she remembered include "Ringo Is My Favorite Beatle," "The Tooth-Fairy and Other Christian Western Lies," and "The Socio-Economic Ramifications of the Gold Standard as It Pertains to Southeast Asian International Trade, with Special Emphasis on Textile Manufacturing in Fiscal 1966 (and my mommy did not help me)". Texts of these works have not yet been uncovered.
As for Master Barack's political treatise, our investigative team was led a merry chase. His teacher, Mrs. Glynis Thistlewaite-Harumphy of Madding-under-Bulge, recalled that she had saved the document for several years, until it was stolen from its frame by house-breaking hooligans. With the aid of Interpol, the daughter of one of the offenders was found, who revealed that the text of the essay had been inscribed onto a copper scroll by an outlawed prophetic sect of Dervishes.
This scroll in turn was thought to have been lost in the great conflagration that erupted when Jakarta's sewer system exploded in 1971. But blastwaves propelled the sacred relic into a rooftop budgie hutch, wherein it remained undetected for several decades. When it was finally discovered, upon the demolition of the hutch, the scroll's value was unrecognized, and it was melted down to make nose rings for North Korean pigs.
In the meantime, the actual essay itself was produced and handed to our investigators by the hooligan's daughter, one Navratilova Glick, who had been using it as a bookmark in her studies of the collected works of Balzac.
With that history being told, leave us to proceed to the text itself:
The implications of this raw, this bare naked ambition are overwhelming. The ramifications are beyond calculation. Is a man like this suitable for high office? In light of these shocking revelations, the staff of Forgotten Prophets™ have no recourse but to throw our full influence and support behind the Hillary Milk Train. She's the Juggernaut, bitch.
Next week these pages will reveal the shocking truth about John Edwards' hair, and from what part of his body the plugs were taken. Hillary has all her hair, which is blonde.
J
Before we reproduce the text, a few words about the investigative process are in order. The essay's existence first came to light when operatives for the Hillary presidential campaign interviewed the teacher of Obama when he was five years old in Indonesia. She recalled that Obama had written an essay which he blatantly titled "I Want to Become President".
Hillary's agents managed to coax similar memories from the aged pedagogue regarding the literary efforts of the precocious Barack. Other essay titles that she remembered include "Ringo Is My Favorite Beatle," "The Tooth-Fairy and Other Christian Western Lies," and "The Socio-Economic Ramifications of the Gold Standard as It Pertains to Southeast Asian International Trade, with Special Emphasis on Textile Manufacturing in Fiscal 1966 (and my mommy did not help me)". Texts of these works have not yet been uncovered.
As for Master Barack's political treatise, our investigative team was led a merry chase. His teacher, Mrs. Glynis Thistlewaite-Harumphy of Madding-under-Bulge, recalled that she had saved the document for several years, until it was stolen from its frame by house-breaking hooligans. With the aid of Interpol, the daughter of one of the offenders was found, who revealed that the text of the essay had been inscribed onto a copper scroll by an outlawed prophetic sect of Dervishes.
This scroll in turn was thought to have been lost in the great conflagration that erupted when Jakarta's sewer system exploded in 1971. But blastwaves propelled the sacred relic into a rooftop budgie hutch, wherein it remained undetected for several decades. When it was finally discovered, upon the demolition of the hutch, the scroll's value was unrecognized, and it was melted down to make nose rings for North Korean pigs.
In the meantime, the actual essay itself was produced and handed to our investigators by the hooligan's daughter, one Navratilova Glick, who had been using it as a bookmark in her studies of the collected works of Balzac.
With that history being told, leave us to proceed to the text itself:
~~~~~
"I Want to Become President"
by
Barack O., age 5 and 1 half
Being president means many things to many people. It is a very good thing. To some, it seems bad. To others it seems good. It means many things. Many people have different ideas about it. Some think it is good. Others think it is bad. It means many things. People like it, while other people do not. The different ideas that many people have about it mean many things to them. There are many opinions. Many people have opinions about this. It is a very good thing.
~~~~~
The implications of this raw, this bare naked ambition are overwhelming. The ramifications are beyond calculation. Is a man like this suitable for high office? In light of these shocking revelations, the staff of Forgotten Prophets™ have no recourse but to throw our full influence and support behind the Hillary Milk Train. She's the Juggernaut, bitch.
Next week these pages will reveal the shocking truth about John Edwards' hair, and from what part of his body the plugs were taken. Hillary has all her hair, which is blonde.
J
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Nuhvahduh
Interesting. Hillary won the popular vote in Nevada, and Obama won the most delegates -- 13 to 12. Shades of 2000. Technically that means Obama won, but since his great rationale for running is that he can inspire the most people, his victory is somehow oddly non-symbolic. Hillary won across all demographics. This suggests that the hispanic vote, although of "minorities," will not be going to the minority. Who knows. In this case the minority is also the union vote, which means old-time Democrat, which means clintons.
bill has taken to squealing about unfairness, the day before his wife's various primaries, claiming some inequity from the media or the blacks or someone. Who knows. Poor bill. Maybe that should be his nickname. In terms of primary/caucus delegates, Obama is two points ahead of Hillary, 38 to 36. Hillary got all those "super delegate" party machine votes -- 167 to Obama's 110. Make of that what you will. I see it as a Hillary win. Who can fight that clinton machine? The Dem candidate will need 2025 delegates to win the nomination. Hillary has 203, so she's precisely one-tenth of the way to victory. There's a long way to go.
Edwards? He wants to be king-maker. I expect he'll throw his delegates to Hillary. Kerry endorsed Obama rather than Edwards, his old running-mate. What a slap in the face. But it may be that Hillary wouldn't need his votes, except that, if he gives them to Obama, he'd be the nominee. Hmm. Secretary of State Edwards? Yikes. It would be a good thing only if the Middle East demands that we negotiate only with their doctors. Then he'd kick ass.
As for the GOP, it was a Romney blowout in Nevada -- 17 delegates, to McCain's and Paul's 4. McCain seems to have taken South Carolina, just ahead of Huckabee and slamming the door on Thompson. Giuliani scored his one and only delegate so far in Nevada. He needs to win in Florida. It's been his strategy. If he pulls it off, he'll look like a genius. If not, he's probably done. It'd be so cool if it were a viable 4-man race. Far out. But McCain's polling ahead Florida and California. And we know how important polls are. I saw Romney on Leno last night. He'll do.
There seems to be a media conspiracy to change our way of pronouncing Nevada, to Nevahda. They did the same thing with Moscow. Moss-cow. They've changed it to Moss-co. Seems to be the British way of saying it. Hey, America-haters: we say Moss-cow. And you suck.
J
bill has taken to squealing about unfairness, the day before his wife's various primaries, claiming some inequity from the media or the blacks or someone. Who knows. Poor bill. Maybe that should be his nickname. In terms of primary/caucus delegates, Obama is two points ahead of Hillary, 38 to 36. Hillary got all those "super delegate" party machine votes -- 167 to Obama's 110. Make of that what you will. I see it as a Hillary win. Who can fight that clinton machine? The Dem candidate will need 2025 delegates to win the nomination. Hillary has 203, so she's precisely one-tenth of the way to victory. There's a long way to go.
Edwards? He wants to be king-maker. I expect he'll throw his delegates to Hillary. Kerry endorsed Obama rather than Edwards, his old running-mate. What a slap in the face. But it may be that Hillary wouldn't need his votes, except that, if he gives them to Obama, he'd be the nominee. Hmm. Secretary of State Edwards? Yikes. It would be a good thing only if the Middle East demands that we negotiate only with their doctors. Then he'd kick ass.
As for the GOP, it was a Romney blowout in Nevada -- 17 delegates, to McCain's and Paul's 4. McCain seems to have taken South Carolina, just ahead of Huckabee and slamming the door on Thompson. Giuliani scored his one and only delegate so far in Nevada. He needs to win in Florida. It's been his strategy. If he pulls it off, he'll look like a genius. If not, he's probably done. It'd be so cool if it were a viable 4-man race. Far out. But McCain's polling ahead Florida and California. And we know how important polls are. I saw Romney on Leno last night. He'll do.
There seems to be a media conspiracy to change our way of pronouncing Nevada, to Nevahda. They did the same thing with Moscow. Moss-cow. They've changed it to Moss-co. Seems to be the British way of saying it. Hey, America-haters: we say Moss-cow. And you suck.
J
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Identity
I heard Obama yesterday in a radio clip of an interview he gave to a Nevada newspaper. He was talking about the importance of Reagan as a break from the past, who 'changed the trajectory of America, in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that bill clinton did not.' (From memory.) He talked about the excesses of the sixties and seventies, rather than mouthing the predictable Democrat cliche of the excessive eighties. He mentioned the expansion without any accountability of government.
I was impressed. It was a very smart analysis. It showed a lot of awareness. It didn't appeal to the bigotry of his natural constituency. If his political ideas were as smart as his analysis -- well, he'd be a conservative. What a waste. The bright spot is, if he were to be elected, maybe he does indeed have some common sense. Maybe the realities of politics and the long history of liberal failure would crack through his indoctrination.
I heard a clip of him on the sharpton radio show -- catering to all your black racist and grievance-mongering needs -- and he was talking about "our" community. Well. So much for his transcending race. But reality is what it is. If a white politician seeking high office were to use such language, he'd be tarred and feathered. As it were. Obama said, "When the American economy gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia." A funny line. Two things about it. First, it's true. Second, Obama is not color blind, and very clearly identifies with his African roots. Racist? No, probably just racial. We need to make that distinction. I don't, a lot. But I've got that middle class white thing going on, of pretending to think that there should be no official distinctions, and no behavioral ones either. All our discrimination, or most of it, should be mental.
When Obama ran against Allen Keyes in Illinois for the Senate in 2004, Keyes (reportedly) made some point about Obama not being an authentic black, because he wasn't descended from slaves. Good lord. Keyes is a black conservative, who seems to have gone insane. He runs for president every election, and when he first came on the scene, I would have voted for him. But he seems a little mad. Obama apparently shrugged or laughed the comment off. That was the right way to handle it. Good lord. What an idea. You're not a Jew unless you survived the Nazi ovens? You're not Armenian unless the Turks tried to kill your grandparents? I hadn't realized that roots in slavery was the watermark of authentic negritude. My spell checker didn't flag that word.
Anyway, it turns out that the guy I picked up at the airport wasn't my son. In fact, I wasn't even at the airport. It was a bus station. Funny how I could have made that mistake. My actual son had to catch a shuttle, and came in about midnight. When he found that other poser there, tearing up my comic book collection, he tossed him out into the gutter. Such a wonderful son I have.
We rolled today at the Y. I got him a couple of times, but he got me once with an arm bar. That rarely happens. He's only been able to train in chunks of a month or so, per year. He probably has 5 months total of steady rolling. He seems to be gifted. And he is hellaciously strong. In a month or so he's going to be getting me regularly. I hardly know what to think about that. I'd like to grind the punk into the mat every time. All of those punks should be pulped, by me, all the time. Damn punks. But my son's excellence is my excellence, so I can't really lose. It is bothersome, being fiftyish. So much lost potential. If my son is a gauge, I really might have been something special, 25 years ago. As it is, I'm just a stubborn middle-aged man. It'll have to do.
J
I was impressed. It was a very smart analysis. It showed a lot of awareness. It didn't appeal to the bigotry of his natural constituency. If his political ideas were as smart as his analysis -- well, he'd be a conservative. What a waste. The bright spot is, if he were to be elected, maybe he does indeed have some common sense. Maybe the realities of politics and the long history of liberal failure would crack through his indoctrination.
I heard a clip of him on the sharpton radio show -- catering to all your black racist and grievance-mongering needs -- and he was talking about "our" community. Well. So much for his transcending race. But reality is what it is. If a white politician seeking high office were to use such language, he'd be tarred and feathered. As it were. Obama said, "When the American economy gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia." A funny line. Two things about it. First, it's true. Second, Obama is not color blind, and very clearly identifies with his African roots. Racist? No, probably just racial. We need to make that distinction. I don't, a lot. But I've got that middle class white thing going on, of pretending to think that there should be no official distinctions, and no behavioral ones either. All our discrimination, or most of it, should be mental.
When Obama ran against Allen Keyes in Illinois for the Senate in 2004, Keyes (reportedly) made some point about Obama not being an authentic black, because he wasn't descended from slaves. Good lord. Keyes is a black conservative, who seems to have gone insane. He runs for president every election, and when he first came on the scene, I would have voted for him. But he seems a little mad. Obama apparently shrugged or laughed the comment off. That was the right way to handle it. Good lord. What an idea. You're not a Jew unless you survived the Nazi ovens? You're not Armenian unless the Turks tried to kill your grandparents? I hadn't realized that roots in slavery was the watermark of authentic negritude. My spell checker didn't flag that word.
Anyway, it turns out that the guy I picked up at the airport wasn't my son. In fact, I wasn't even at the airport. It was a bus station. Funny how I could have made that mistake. My actual son had to catch a shuttle, and came in about midnight. When he found that other poser there, tearing up my comic book collection, he tossed him out into the gutter. Such a wonderful son I have.
We rolled today at the Y. I got him a couple of times, but he got me once with an arm bar. That rarely happens. He's only been able to train in chunks of a month or so, per year. He probably has 5 months total of steady rolling. He seems to be gifted. And he is hellaciously strong. In a month or so he's going to be getting me regularly. I hardly know what to think about that. I'd like to grind the punk into the mat every time. All of those punks should be pulped, by me, all the time. Damn punks. But my son's excellence is my excellence, so I can't really lose. It is bothersome, being fiftyish. So much lost potential. If my son is a gauge, I really might have been something special, 25 years ago. As it is, I'm just a stubborn middle-aged man. It'll have to do.
J
Bullet Points
If the great issue facing America nowadays is the economy, then Romney is the man to elect. He's run businesses, and understands what the economy demands to produce prosperity. It's not theory, with him. If the issue is business as usual, we have to go with Hillary. She talks about her experience. If she means something other than being a wife, then it must be experience at being a senator in Washington -- part of the status quo club. If you liked the '90s, you'll love Hillary. Aside from the fact that there was no recognized enemy, no danger, and no significant challenge in the '90s. Who knows, maybe she can change back the clock -- that's a sort of change -- and we can somehow return to that holiday from history. Somehow we do associate the name clinton with the idea of spring break.
If the great concern facing the land is some matter of religious doctrine, we gotta go with Huckabee. He was a so-so governor, but he really, really does know the Bible. If we want a moderate liberal who is good on national defense, it's McCain all the way. If what America needs is slow, confident, symbolic manliness, we should go with Thompson. If it's pure symbolism alone, nobody could embody that better than Obama, both in his rhetoric and in his very flesh. If we want divisiveness and an oh-so-eloquent expression of Us v. Them, Edwards. What else can he mean, by his "two Americas" idea?
If the election is about crafting an effective government, then Giuliani is the man. He took the most crime-ridden city in America and in two terms made it the safest large city in America. He took an apparently irredeemable fiscal situation, and put it on a fiscally sound basis. He lowered taxes and increased revenues, and punished corruption and incompetence.
If I want symbols, I'll read Virgina Wolfe novels. If I want heroes, I'll visit the VA hospital. If I want someone to agree with me, I'll get a job teaching second grade. If I want morality I'll go to church -- maybe I'll find it. If I want attractive personalities, I'll find someone who's just like me. If I want pleasing lies, I'll hire a prostitute.
What I want is competence. I want somebody who meets the requirements of the job description. Cheerleaders and speech-makers are fine. That's what public holidays are for. But when playtime is over and it's time to get to work, what we need is effective leadership. In terms of real-world results, there are two guys running who can make a good case for themselves. Once we get over the high school popularity aspect of all this campaigning, we'll see that.
I no longer require doctrinal purity. My candidate will be allowed to be flawed. He can be off on some several issues. He's allowed to have "flip-flopped". A lot. I want him to have changed away from his former wrong ideas as much as possible. He can have been immoral. He can have used drugs. He can have made all sorts of big mistakes. As long as he's recognized them, and changed. He doesn't need to have changed in his heart. I do not care about his heart. I care about what he will do, that is beneficial and effective.
Abortion? It's killing babies. But babies will always be killed. It should be a state issue. We can fight those battles, if they're small enough. Illegal immigration? We can bleed. We just need triage. Staunch the gushing. If we have to be unjust, and give the cheaters what they have stolen and do not deserve, well, that's unclean, but living in the real world makes us dirty. Sometime we have to swallow what is poisonous. We'll survive, if we don't have to do it again, yet again. The war? It's largely won. The cowards and traitors and betrayers tried their hardest, but we found the winning formula, it seems, and perhaps they have been chastened. No, they haven't, but I don't need perfect truth. Other major issues? Politics is about compromise. We have to live with that fact.
What I'd like to see is, uh, change. That means someone who understands about leadership, and communication, and competence, and all those pretty buzzwords that the left loves but still offers up the same old ideas, and the right loves but is too in love with itself to achieve. A good place to start, with this change thing, would be to stop thinking that politics is a religion. It's just about potholes and borders, and how they will be paid for. Charity is for churches. Saints belong in the hard cold places of the world. Government workers have one job, which is to open the door and get the hell out of the way.
As for my son, yes, I picked him up this evening. I hardly recognized him, except he called me "pops". He'd shaved the left side of his head and dyed the rest of his hair pink. He'd sharpened his teeth to points, lost 70 points because of a meth addiction, and lost most of his nose to syphilis. Right now he's in the kitchen making the cat hiss. My son, my wonderful son. What the hell did the Army do to him? I'll have to rethink this patriotism thing. America sucks. Go, Edwards!
J
If the great concern facing the land is some matter of religious doctrine, we gotta go with Huckabee. He was a so-so governor, but he really, really does know the Bible. If we want a moderate liberal who is good on national defense, it's McCain all the way. If what America needs is slow, confident, symbolic manliness, we should go with Thompson. If it's pure symbolism alone, nobody could embody that better than Obama, both in his rhetoric and in his very flesh. If we want divisiveness and an oh-so-eloquent expression of Us v. Them, Edwards. What else can he mean, by his "two Americas" idea?
If the election is about crafting an effective government, then Giuliani is the man. He took the most crime-ridden city in America and in two terms made it the safest large city in America. He took an apparently irredeemable fiscal situation, and put it on a fiscally sound basis. He lowered taxes and increased revenues, and punished corruption and incompetence.
If I want symbols, I'll read Virgina Wolfe novels. If I want heroes, I'll visit the VA hospital. If I want someone to agree with me, I'll get a job teaching second grade. If I want morality I'll go to church -- maybe I'll find it. If I want attractive personalities, I'll find someone who's just like me. If I want pleasing lies, I'll hire a prostitute.
What I want is competence. I want somebody who meets the requirements of the job description. Cheerleaders and speech-makers are fine. That's what public holidays are for. But when playtime is over and it's time to get to work, what we need is effective leadership. In terms of real-world results, there are two guys running who can make a good case for themselves. Once we get over the high school popularity aspect of all this campaigning, we'll see that.
I no longer require doctrinal purity. My candidate will be allowed to be flawed. He can be off on some several issues. He's allowed to have "flip-flopped". A lot. I want him to have changed away from his former wrong ideas as much as possible. He can have been immoral. He can have used drugs. He can have made all sorts of big mistakes. As long as he's recognized them, and changed. He doesn't need to have changed in his heart. I do not care about his heart. I care about what he will do, that is beneficial and effective.
Abortion? It's killing babies. But babies will always be killed. It should be a state issue. We can fight those battles, if they're small enough. Illegal immigration? We can bleed. We just need triage. Staunch the gushing. If we have to be unjust, and give the cheaters what they have stolen and do not deserve, well, that's unclean, but living in the real world makes us dirty. Sometime we have to swallow what is poisonous. We'll survive, if we don't have to do it again, yet again. The war? It's largely won. The cowards and traitors and betrayers tried their hardest, but we found the winning formula, it seems, and perhaps they have been chastened. No, they haven't, but I don't need perfect truth. Other major issues? Politics is about compromise. We have to live with that fact.
What I'd like to see is, uh, change. That means someone who understands about leadership, and communication, and competence, and all those pretty buzzwords that the left loves but still offers up the same old ideas, and the right loves but is too in love with itself to achieve. A good place to start, with this change thing, would be to stop thinking that politics is a religion. It's just about potholes and borders, and how they will be paid for. Charity is for churches. Saints belong in the hard cold places of the world. Government workers have one job, which is to open the door and get the hell out of the way.
As for my son, yes, I picked him up this evening. I hardly recognized him, except he called me "pops". He'd shaved the left side of his head and dyed the rest of his hair pink. He'd sharpened his teeth to points, lost 70 points because of a meth addiction, and lost most of his nose to syphilis. Right now he's in the kitchen making the cat hiss. My son, my wonderful son. What the hell did the Army do to him? I'll have to rethink this patriotism thing. America sucks. Go, Edwards!
J
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Thirst
If we crave justice the way a drowning man craves air? Our appetite will go unfulfilled. There is no justice. You know that from me already. I might be wrong, but no one has pointed out my error. Justice, as I’ve said, is an equal and appropriate response. It is the balancing of the scales. How, I ask, is that possible? Some certain material restitution can be provided, but what of the emotional, the spiritual cost? What of the loss of faith? It must be, if there is justice, that it can concern itself only with the material. This is an unsatisfactory answer to me. Property is the least important of our inalienable rights.
I said, half jokingly tonight, that there were a few people I’d kill on sight. One of them is named X. Someone said it wasn’t very smart of me to tell people the name of someone I was going to kill. Oh, nobody here will ever hear about it. It takes weeks for missing persons to become news. Ha ha. Obviously, the subtext was that there is no justice. We have to make our own justice. Which is illegal. A double-bind.
What then can we do? In a material universe that is destined for heat death, where every atom will slow and become still until it crystallizes or dissolves into infinitesimal foam and then into nothingness, what balance will there be between darkness and light? There will be no light. And here, now, where joys are small and grief is large, and comfort is largely theoretical, what are we to do? We console ourselves that the joy of the new life given into our care with the birth of a baby will be sufficient to assuage the later death of that child. Life, and death -- a balance, a material balance. And we tell ourselves that the joy justifies the grief. A philosophical solution.
How can we counteract the random maliciousness of this world?
It must be through spontaneous acts of kindness -- motiveless, the way cruelty is. We must be light. We must be gentle, and honorable, and graceful in our hearts.
Do I have a point? Well, my point is obvious. Whether or not I have an effect is the question. Everything I say is talking to myself.
J
I said, half jokingly tonight, that there were a few people I’d kill on sight. One of them is named X. Someone said it wasn’t very smart of me to tell people the name of someone I was going to kill. Oh, nobody here will ever hear about it. It takes weeks for missing persons to become news. Ha ha. Obviously, the subtext was that there is no justice. We have to make our own justice. Which is illegal. A double-bind.
What then can we do? In a material universe that is destined for heat death, where every atom will slow and become still until it crystallizes or dissolves into infinitesimal foam and then into nothingness, what balance will there be between darkness and light? There will be no light. And here, now, where joys are small and grief is large, and comfort is largely theoretical, what are we to do? We console ourselves that the joy of the new life given into our care with the birth of a baby will be sufficient to assuage the later death of that child. Life, and death -- a balance, a material balance. And we tell ourselves that the joy justifies the grief. A philosophical solution.
How can we counteract the random maliciousness of this world?
It must be through spontaneous acts of kindness -- motiveless, the way cruelty is. We must be light. We must be gentle, and honorable, and graceful in our hearts.
Do I have a point? Well, my point is obvious. Whether or not I have an effect is the question. Everything I say is talking to myself.
J
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