History has two categories of Last Stands. First kind are represented by Thermopylae and the Alamo. The second is exemplified by the Battle for Berlin and the Fall of Constantinople. What chiefly distinguishes the former is that they pre-figure eventual victory. They are the night before the dawn; and so are glorious. The playwright Aeschylus simply wanted to be remembered as veteran of the Battle of the Marathon — a Marathonomachos. But in the second category of last acts, the sun never rises. The loss of Nazi Germany and Constantinople are final. That doesn’t mean they are uninteresting. The death of great states like the loss of great ocean liners, are fascinating in the way that watching a giant killed by a thousand cuts has a morbid attraction. The descent from the pinnacle of power into the dust gives their story the power of tragic horror.
When Constantinople fell to the Turks, it was already more than a thousand years old. Although it had long been in decline, it still sheltered behind the largest defensive walls in the world. Its fall was still inconceivable. But it no longer had the money to buy the best military technology. That talent eventually wound up selling its services to the Turks.
Prior to the siege of Constantinople it was known that the Ottomans had the ability to cast medium-sized cannon, but the range of some pieces they were able to put to field far surpassed the defenders’ expectations. Instrumental to this Ottoman advancement in arms production was a somewhat mysterious figure by the name of Orban, a Hungarian (though some suggest he was German.
The master founder initially tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who were, however, unable to secure the funds needed to hire him. Orban then left Constantinople and approached Mehmed II, claiming that his weapon could blast ‘the walls of Babylon itself’. Given abundant funds and materials, the Hungarian engineer built the gun within three months at Adrianople, from which it was dragged by sixty oxen to Constantinople. In the meantime, Orban also produced other cannon instrumental for the Turkish siege forces.
The end came upon a population who till the very last hour never believed it could happen. But it did. And the transformation of Constantinople’s respected citizens into slaves overnight inspires pity and terror even centuries later.
After the initial assault, the Ottoman army fanned out along the main thoroughfare of the city, the Mese, past the great forums, and past the Church of the Holy Apostles, which Mehmed II wanted to provide a seat for his newly appointed patriarch which would help him better control his Christian subjects. Mehmed II had sent an advance guard to protect key buildings such as the Holy Apostles, as he did not wish to establish his new capital in a thoroughly devastated city.
The Army converged upon the Augusteum, the vast square that fronted the great church of Hagia Sophia whose bronze gates were barred by a huge throng of civilians inside the building, hoping for divine protection at this late hour. After the doors were breached, the troops separated the congregation according to what price they might bring on the slave markets. There were some raping and pillaging according to the English historian John Julius Norwich. Soldiers fought over the possession of some of the spoils of war. According to the Venetian surgeon Nicolo Barbaro “all through the day the Turks made a great slaughter of Christians through the city”.
The more recent death of another great state, Nazi Germany, has provided equally striking scenes. If the British or the US Army had reached Berlin first, the defeat of the Nazis might have been as complete, but its demise at the hands of the Red Army, the instrument of a dictator every bit as evil and possibly more ruthless than Hitler himself provided an infernal quality. The recent movie Downfall dramatizes the last days in Hitler’s bunker. In narrative structure it can be described as the story of the Titanic on land. It has all the familiar elements: the initial gaiety and optimism, the foreboding, the arrival of nemesis and then the gradual realization among the main characters that they are doomed.
The chronicle of how each of the main characters in the Bunker adapts to impending destruction provides enough material for a hundred dramas. There is the fate of the damned: the Hitlers and the Goebbels who in the end they destroy themselves, their children and whoever else they can from sheer pride, even when it is pride in something they can no longer believe in. There is something Satanic about their stony inflexibility and it is easy to see them uttering the devil’s own defiance of God from Paradise Lost.
… What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed
Then there are deluded and there are the disillusioned, like Traudl Junge, a young woman who was one of Hitler’s secretaries and around who the movie revolves. They realize, too late, that they have bet on the wrong horse. But they keep on betting, keep on living, with just enough self-motivation to survive. My favorite characters in the movie are the unthinking: the people of no particular intelligence, heroism or malevolence, who keep on doing a job until they find themselves pointlessly tidying up in a deserted bunker wondering how it all came to this. Maybe the most common last words on earth are, “oh shit”. There are a lot of people in the world who only want to earn a paycheck and go bowling on Saturday night.
The characters in Hitler’s bunker are the archeypes; and every tale of downfall has their kind again and again. The Bad, the Unlucky and the Clueless. We judge victims and even villains by their according to these categories. We sympathize with Italian or Romanian troops who slink away when defeat impends. But we look askance at Ceauşescu and Mussolini as scoundrels because they were killed while running for their lives. Even as devils they were second-rate.
But the true fascination of stories of the End is the realization that great empires — and great ships — are mortal; that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it. They remain blind to the end, toasting each other, offering one another meaningless Golden Party Badges. Madmen in a madhouse. Those who trusted in the walls of Constantinople, the professionalism of the German Army; or the subdivision of the unsinkable RMS Titanic were according to their own lights the best informed, the most knowledgeable and the most worthy of their societies. Indeed, that is what trapped them. Their lives were so bound up in the paradigms of their system that they could not see it as failing. The young secretary Traudl Junge survived because she knew when it was over.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
It gives me great pleasure to imagine the end scenes of the presidency of Barry Obama at the close of his first and only term with the tragic death-of-empire mindset of his far left minions as power slips from their grasp and their mental projections collapse.
Clinton’s people stole the cutlery. I wonder what Barry’s people will do, given their intense hatred of the real America.
I wouldn’t wish too hard for any kind of real demise. That has a way of being tough on everyone, but especially on the most helpless. But I think it’s important to remember that defeat, like bankruptcy, exists. It isn’t something that “can’t happen here”. Those who spend out a legacy with the same profligacy with which wastrel runs through a family fortune have to remember they are the custodians, not the beneficiaries of the past.
Of course a real wastrel never sees it until the last coin goes down the slot. But the power of democratic politics lies precisely in the existence of mechanisms which enable realizations, then warnings and finally changes to take place. What democracy is supposed to innoculate against is fantasy, through the franchise of the common man. Charles Krauthammer wrote that “decline is a choice”.
Nothing is written, unless we lay the doom upon ourselves.
But the true fascination of stories of the End is the realization that great empires — and great ships — are mortal; that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it.
In a different kind of movie, the privileged don’t see it because it never affects them.
Everyday, in this small university town I live in, I run into retired and current faculty who will never experience the creeping economic and social disintegration enabled by their anti-American, Leftist politics. Their pensions and university privileges continue until they die. Those still working will never be laid off. Yet despite their working-class rhetoric, I know from experience that they won’t raise a finger to save a staff job.
Some days I feel like I live among the Nazis who escaped to South America. They’ll die happy in big houses on the nearby mountainside whether America declines or recovers. Grants and taxes collected from the rest of the state will safeguard the idyllic quality of the surrounding community. Life’s not fair.
“The master founder initially tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who were, however, unable to secure the funds needed to hire him. Orban then left Constantinople and approached Mehmed II, claiming that his weapon could blast ‘the walls of Babylon itself’.”
In my opinion, the current administration learned this lesson and has decided to destroy the currency in order to weaken the country’s ability to defend itself. Add to that such statements as Obama’s “I will not weaponize space” –a guarantee that any country that does weaponize space can have the U.S. for lunch– indicates they are playing for a different team.
I wonder how many lefty Hollywood starlets will enjoy being dragged through the streets and raped to death? How many radical environmentalists will celebrate the plunder of our national parks, as foreign creditors mine for commodities to settle our debts?
With the Turks now astride the routes to the East and the backroom deals of the Italian merchant states monopolizing trade and access, first the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the Dutch start the exploration and expansion of a reborn Western Civilization.
In the ashes of Berlin is also buried the Prussified Germany united under the Kaiser and Bismark and hundreds of years of militarism rather than than a free federal union composed of long autonomous Rhineland states.
For each death, there’s a rebirth.
BTW, in case it sounds like sour grapes, that “I know from experience that they won’t raise a finger to save a staff job” doesn’t apply to me. I quit after 20 years, thinking my investments would continue their secure climb (snort).
Something called the Singularity Summit was taking place at the very time the doctrine of end-of-life care was being sold and the need to cut back on human numbers for the sake of Gaia was being touted. How can these two universes coexist at one and the same historical moment? These first years of the 21st century have somehow taken humanity and in particular America, to a crossroads. Before it, one road goes back to the Bolshevist, collectivist past. Another leads to the planets, to new sources of energy and eventually, the stars. The road backward leads to a new aristocracy, old but ever stylish in an sterile way; and the other to a world in which greater freedom than hitherto imaginable is possible.
We have the privilege of being in the middle of a wrangle over which path to follow. The aristocrats have got themselves a front man; and I think it is the measure of their desperation that they’ve hidden behind the halt, the lame and the historically disadvantaged to conceal an agenda which is fundamentally based on permanent privilege. They are in fancy dress; as the courtiers at Versailles once used to dress as shepherds; as genuine an article as Bill Ayers is a “man of the people”.
Despair should be the furthest thing from our minds, though the real dangers must always be before us. Dickens put it best: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way.”
This strange chiaroscuro is always the characteristic of revolutionary times. Everything is on a knife’s edge and every man’s effort counts. That’s how it must have been at all the times that really mattered. Well, which will it be? The Bolshevik past or the stars?
The stars, my friend. The stars.
Though it will be a difficult & long road.
Do not lose hope & keep running the straight race.
While despair should be the furthest thing from our minds, aprehension is another matter entirely. We may have reached a point where a revolution may be needed before we can choose which path to take. I’m not saying that it will, or should, be a bloody or voilent revolution, but before we can go any further one side will need to lose.
“…the 21st century have somehow taken humanity and in particular America, to a crossroads…” –Wretchard
I have a feeling that it is a select few power players in the ’21st century’ who have taken America to a crossroads.
Let’s face it, the election was stacked. We are stuck with a blithering Marxist President with an ego the size of a football stadium – and whose ego need feeding daily.
We are at crossroads in Afghanistan and by happenstance the “Nobel” committee suddenly awards this egotistical dolt of a President the “Peace Prize” and $1.4 million to essentially cut-and-run.
This is transparent geopolitical manipulation by certain power brokers. Who those power brokers are is a good question. Are they a huge group of bedraggled hippies so doped-up they can’t see the trees from forest? Are they a group of rabid Kossacks that live for domination and power? Are they a group of shrewd state sponsored players who have been hired to bring America to its knees? I suspect the latter. But, time will tell.
#8 Amit Green – Only if the USA is willing to give up its hegemony for the future of humanity.
I have become increasingly convinced that the entire true purpose of NASA is to keep the human race stuck on this mudball, for the purpose of of keeping America’s place as largest fish in an increasingly cramped pond. Once humans in numbers get into space, then the hegemony of the USA will be over – it’s just a matter of time. Exponential growth is a wonderful thing!
The real tragedy is that there are only two ends to the process if they succeed in this aim in the short term. Either they succeed, and civilisation ends by some means when either irreversible environmental degradation or some random cosmic accident ends it – or they fail, and all they will have achieved is to ensure that the lingua franca of the Solar System will be Mandarin.
The Obama administration is already exhibiting signs of bunker mentality. The question seems to be will Obama bring down the country before he fails or not. Perhaps I’m unduly optimistic, but I feel that there is a line that Obama will cross that will put him into the category of “..enemy both foreign and domestic.” that will bring the wrath of the “Oath keepers” down upon him.
“A republic, if you can keep it”
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Adams had all his marbles. If we do not govern ourselves then our ungoverned passions will cause enough harm to provoke laws, and regulations, and more laws; until we drown in a swamp of contradictory rules which make every man a felon.
The Lord raises up and the Lord puts down; the Lord rules over the nations. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
A leitmofif runs through the Canterbury Tales: “Lo, pitee renneth soone in gentil herte!”(“Pity wells up quickly in a gentle-hearted person” . . . sounds better in Middle English.)
The Prioresse (“Amor omnia vincit”) has a gentil heart, pats her lap dog, and tells with great piety and emotion the tale of the murder of a young boy by the invidious Jews.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I think especially of the elites’ gentle heart, love of animals, and great love of humanity, the gentleness of the globalists even as they pass among themselves the ever-new tales of the perfidity of the Jews.
Those who want to perpetrate violence often wrap themselves in a cloak of great decency. “Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace,” as Dylan sings and a reader reminded us in a prior post. Violence always will need a scapegoat.
In the laws of war in the Middle Ages, the besieger gave three ultimatums to the beseiged. After that the black flag of havoc went up. If the city fell, the beseiged were totally without recourse to further negotiation. Pity? No way: what belonged to the besieged now belongs to the conqueror. Isn’t it just a dream for gentle hearts to think that it could ever be and will ever be otherwise?
Someone once wrote on this blog, I think it was Marymcl, that liberals think that every dangerous enemy needs a chance to access this or her inner liberal, after which the dangerous enemy will recognize the need for dialogue.
“Grizzly Man” in the Herzog film thought the same thing about grizzly bears.
Some days I feel like I live among the Nazis who escaped to South America. They’ll die happy in big houses on the nearby mountainside whether America declines or recovers. Grants and taxes collected from the rest of the state will safeguard the idyllic quality of the surrounding community. Life’s not fair.
Psalm 52, amigo, Psalm 52.
An afterlife where perfect justice is administered to right the wrongs committed in this life …
… either it exists, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then that makes the human yearning for justice not just a bad joke, but the obscenity of obscenities.
I’m staking everything on the existence of that ultimate justice.
Maybe the most common last words on earth are, “oh shit”.
Wretchard, one of the things I most appreciate about this blog (and there are many) is the linguistic decorum and self-control of the posters, led in example by yourself.
When a person known rarely to swear, swears, it has that much more effect. And you know it means something; it’s not just a casual, throwaway utterance.
That you keep the blue language to a minimum is why I had to stop and re-read the sentence above, and the more I thought about it the more I have come to the conclusion that you nailed it.
“Oh, shit” is the last utterance or thought-flash of the unprepared. Some people are unprepared for the earthly events that end their lives. (Understandably so, in certain cases. Which of those poor souls on Flight 11 could have guessed that the terrorism paradigm had changed, and they were about to be immolated upon the altar of a NYC skyscraper rather than held hostage on a Cuban tarmac but ultimately released?)
Some (many, perhaps most) are unprepared for that which follows the end of their lives here.
That’s why I count having gotten mugged at gunpoint a few years ago as a blessing of sorts, because when you find yourself facing the business end of a firearm held by a person with no scruples, you really do find out where you stand, preparedness-wise, on the scale that ultimately counts … that which follows this life.
Just as you observed that power, especially great power, can be the thing that blinds a person to their true circumstances and even the ravages of crisis all around them, utter powerlessness can do just the opposite. You never see more clearly than when you realize how little control you have over events.
Indeed, which will it be? Are we on the precipice of a new Dark Ages of some sort of modern feudalism? Or at the overture to disintegration, disease and death? Or on the threshold of a burst of freedom, technological solutions to energy, etc? Or are we poised at the new Tower of Babel, armed with knowledge of the nucleus and the genome, ready to build things we humans have no business building?
Compared to these alternatives Barak Obama is a mere speck on the tableau of history, yet he may push us one way or the other.
Casandra was right even though her name has been associated with false pessimism.
11. Fletcher Christian:
“I have become increasingly convinced that the entire true purpose of NASA is to keep the human race stuck on this mudball, for the purpose of of keeping America’s place as largest fish in an increasingly cramped pond.”
Good grief, Christian, have you gone off your government supplied meds?
Do conspiracy theories come readily to you?
The UK and the rest of the euro weenies spend so much of their national wealth on social entitlements that there isn’t enough money left to maintain credible defence forces let alone do any serious space exploration.
Y’all are essentially self limiting. The US need do nothing.
It will not be the half senile nations of Europe and its offshore islands that forge the future of humanity.
Unless they ruminate it to stasis.
Good morning BC. Good post wretchard. Timely and prescient, thx. I sent it to a friend of mine who I’m trying to have become more active in the cause. He’s a common sense sort who is starting to see what’s going on.
All true power rests in ourselves. The question is whether one man with his cohorts and accesories can impose a decline on us.
The Tea Partiers are saying no. The 2 A people also say no.
The middle is being forced to pick sides as the choices become clear.
The is a major disruption, we can learn from this or succumb. Our choice. I choose to survive. If not survival is possible then my end comes with my choosing.
Psalm 73 while we’re at it, too:
“For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
“They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
in their arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.
“… Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.”
“… When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me
till I entered the sanctuary of the God;
then I understood their final destiny.
“… How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
“… Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.”
*********************
Anyone otherwise wondering how a “tongue” could possibly “take possession of the earth” need only look at international events in the age of mass media. Substitute “teleprompter” for “tongue” and you have, for example, the sheer farce emanating from Oslo. Apparently “talking the talk” is good enough to garner what is supposedly the greatest humanitarian award on the planet … provided, of course, that the talk is the right (left) kind of talk. “Peace through strength,” OTOH, is precisely the wrong kind of talk.
It’s just that the world’s approved version of talk does not create reality. Too often it obfuscates it. And the reflection off those Golden Party Badges can be downright blinding, which is why they will not see what is coming until after they’ve been hit with it.
NASA is not some sort of conspiracy, because a conspiracy can’t be that incompetent and continue as long as it has.
But if one were to design a way to keep humanity out of space, they are the model you’d follow.
That “B” at 17 was my comment.
Sorry about the inadverdent anonymity (sp?)
B (17): Right, but it’s fair to point out that Fletcher is right about NASA being more of an impediment than a help these days…
#17 B – In what you say about Europe, you are right. Of course, Europe is more fragmented than the USA also, and the ESA bureaucracy is even worse than NASA’s. I subscribe to the ESA bulletin, and every issue is half full of the new methods of data administration they have thought up, with very little mention of collecting it.
However, that still leaves China, who are behind – well behind – but on the other hand are capable of planning for the long term as neither my country or yours (assuming you are American) seems capable.
Perhaps because the electioneering starts on the day after election. What both our countries need is politicians who are more interested in the future of their country than in self-aggrandisement and money. Fat chance.
NASA carries out the policies of the government of the day with the budget that government provices.
Aside from their global warming propaganda, of course where they have been leading the pack for years.
Batman, Cassandra’s curse was twofold–never to be able to predict anything but woe, and never to be believed. And she was always right.
My gut feeling is that Western economies are far more brittle than we believe. Our culture is less secure than we believe too: Nazi worship of race and state is still within living memory. Could it happen again? Sure. There are plenty of worshipers of the state, and plenty of people eager to submit themselves to anyone who will relieve them of the burden of thinking and the risk of responsibility.
Good read of the 73rd psalm.
It looks like the end, but for who?
There is a fairly large class of people who should be classified as priests or clerics, who these days occupy the nominal professions and bureaucracies of law and education. They provide us with moral instruction; arrange the exposure and punishment of our sins; and conduct sacrifices for the absolution of individual and collective transgressions. What do teachers and professors primarily do, except tell us how bad we are and have been? What do lawyers do except keep us on the liberal straight and narrow and go after the uncooperative? What do judges and legislatures do but create laws to control potentially unliberal behavior and make payments to the victims?
Ok, that’s not all they do, but it’s a big part. In a stable society- where they maintain a constant level of influence and access, they stay at the side of the powerful, whispering in the ear and tugging at the sleeve, but not actually occupying the chair.
When these people actually take power, or have too much influence they become an excessive burden and the people revolt. The time from the Johnson landslide to the election of Nixon was only for years. The Silent Majority is not silent these days. The left is in the process of a grotesque and unwise overreaching- Obama didn’t even expect to win, he only hoped to prepare for a future campaign.
This has a way to go to play out but Obama and friends are on their way out and fairly quickly. What is going to be cobbled together to replace them remains to be seen, but if we don’t put an end to the madness the Chinese will.
Good comments, one and all. But while it’s clear to me that the common theme seems to be “something must be done!”, I also note that the unspoken corollary is that The Something will be done by someone else. It’s not simply a matter of waiting until The One falls “into the category of ‘..enemy both foreign and domestic.’ that will bring the wrath of the ‘Oath keepers’ down upon him.” That smacks of trading one set of keepers for another. We, the people, are the oath keepers. Or at least we should be. Waiting and hoping for someone else to solve our problems is a lousy way to get things done. What we need are concrete steps to reverse Constantinople’s decline.
Gregg:
What say the polls?
Ah yes, “who will bell the cat.”
“Those who know not, speak.
Those who know are silent.”
I speak and know not.
RE: #20 bogie wheel.
I agree with your interpretation. See also Psalm 29
“The Lord will give strength to His people;
The Lord will bless His people with peace.”
Note that strength comes before peace. (In Hebrew it is Oz before Shalom)
Yeates said it in 1919.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
See especially the lines:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Tic tock, tic tock, tic tock….
Of course, some time before the final scene in das Furtherbunker there were warning signs.
Early in 1944 Gen. Adolph Galland, the Luftwaffe’s General of Fighters expressed concern over reports of new long range American fighter escorts penetrating deep into Germany. The response was definitive “Reports of American fighters penetrating east of the Rhur are false!” So he and another Luftwaffe general climbed into a couple of FW-190 fighters and went up to see for themselves.
They saw, and then some. The fighters that were not supposed to be there – new USAAF P-51’s – shot down Galland’s companion; he himself escaped only by a desperate ruse.
Earlier this year Iran launched a satellite into space. A Sputnik moment? Hardly! The Obama Admin announced that a new intelligence estimate showed that Iran was behind schedule on developing ballistic missiles and based its cancellation of missile defense programs on that “fact.”. And now we hear that Iran has a new secret nuclear facility. Funny that we are not hearing more about the infamous New Intelligence Estimate of a couple of years ago that said that that Iran had stopped their nuclear programs, isn’t it?
The pretenders and his bolshevik posse have been toe-tapping the line and just can’t help themselves, they will over reach. Then the Concord event may well come. I pray that the oath keepers do their duty because the alternative is hell incarnate. Never in the history of mankind has the common man had the capability to water the tree of liberty so readily available. God bless those who keep their oath.
@34 lugh lampfhota
I hope and pray you are right. But just as two World Wars were won “On the playing fields of Eaton,” do you think that a nation that finds dodge ball too competitive and too brutal will have it in them (us) to do so?
Fletcher Christian @24,
However, that still leaves China, who are behind – well behind – but on the other hand are capable of planning for the long term as neither my country or yours (assuming you are American) seems capable.
Planning is over-rated. None of the Chinese plans will actually happen, not because they’re not smart, but because no plans actually happen.
The Chinese will probably get old before they get rich – we don’t know that, but it’s a real possibility. The US is already rich, and likely to get much, much richer. The reason: we’re flexible. We’re not flexible, of course, because we’re intellectually and morally superior souls (that we’re not is clear, especially to our European allies
), but because we’ve always been a hodgepodge of world views, belief systems, races, classes, and ethnicities, so we’ve had to learn to be flexible just to live together.
The Chinese don’t have 10% of our flexibility, and in the end that is what will ensure our superiority. The Chinese, so long as they cling to outdated notions of central plans driving the economy, will never equal the US. They will be important because of their sheer size, but not important enough to create a bi-polar world.
If, on the other hand, they become more flexible like the US, they will also be less of an existential threat. So we’re in good shape, as long as we keep on our game.
Our biggest threat remains from within, a group of elites that wants us to adopt the European model, a model which relies on … drum roll please … centralized planning. The sheer maddening ironical ahistoricity of it is breathtaking.
Bottom line: if I’m betting my life, I will choose flexibility over planning any day.
I just hope I continue to get to choose.
Cheers,
L3
Wretchard,
My favorite scene in that film is when Hitler decides to marry Eva Braun. The marriage commissioner, with the couple before him, asks, like the perfect bureaucrat he is, to see Hitler’s certificate of Aryanism, or whatever they called it. To which, after a pregnant pause, Goebels protests “but he’s the Fuehrer!” The commissioner proceeds.
NASA
Interesting. The current NASA plan, call it roadmap or something, is being challenged. That plan involves a brand new heavy lift launcher (now behind schedule) so we can launch a SUV big enough to drive all the way to the moon and back on one tank of fuel.
This is challenged by the concept of an on-orbit fuel depot, where you can rendezvous and fuel up before you head out. The new concept allows smaller private launchers to provide fuel and material at a much reduced cost. Navigation, docking and space refueling technologies are just starting to be ready for this.
I have worked with a group examining a very aggressive and novel technique of launching supplies into LEO. There are many possibilities. And there are many private companies examining and testing concepts even now.
So the question is; another NASA dinosaur, or let a 100 flowers bloom?
You can guess where I stand.
“Once humans in numbers get into space, then the hegemony of the USA will be over – it’s just a matter of time.”
Once humans get into space, the cowboys, gunslingers and pioneers will be outta here, leaving you lamoid leftists who want to live off the sweat of everyone else behind. Then you can try stealing from the rich (China) and giving to the poor (Chicago’s ghettos) and see how that works for you.
Because I don’t think NASA (nor China) is going to be the group that takes us there — NASA is too shackled by budgets and PC thinking, and what has China done that’s innovative since they managed to invent gunpowder a while back.
It will be the capitalists who finally blast off to Mars and beyond: the pioneers, the gunslingers and the cowboys. And why on earth would they want to take up valuable space in those endeavors with entities like Fletcher Christian who bring NOTHING to the party but whining illogical complaints?
In the comments on the last thread, wretchard quoted the opening paragraphs of “The Guns of August”. Mrs. Tuchman had some observations in that book’s final paragraph that resonate with the present state of the current war for the West –
“…The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back, Joffre told the soldiers on the eve. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.”
Thinking about the current war I’m torn between a conviction that it is both right and necessary and the equally strong belief that Obama is merely pretending to pursue it in order to save face at home after shooting his mouth off in the campaign. It becomes clearer by the day that he is waving the white flag in the enemy’s direction and they have eyes to see it even if half the US doesn’t. He is abandoning our people in the field and for that he should never, ever be forgiven.
Obama is never going to give the commanders what they ask for. He is more concerned with fighting a covert war of words with his generals than engaging the enemy in a decisive way. My point, rather my dilemma, is how to reconcile my support of the mission with the knowledge that this CIC is truly using our troops as cannon fodder for his own preening ambition and has no intention of winning this war in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
Institutions often project an aura of permanence right up to the end. Too many people look at the outward appearance and fail to look at the substance beneath the facade. The mighty oak may be hollow on the inside and the first stiff breeze may send it crashing down.
The great thing about the US was that it was a nation of laws and limited government and the laws tended to reflect the culture. I don’t think that is the case today. Limitations placed upon the laws are discarded when the rulers find them to be inconvenient, and the political class seems intent on bending the culture rather than reflecting it.
#11 Fletcher Christian:
“”"”" I have become increasingly convinced that the entire true purpose of NASA is to keep the human race stuck on this mudball, for the purpose of of keeping America’s place as largest fish in an increasingly cramped pond. Once humans in numbers get into space, then the hegemony of the USA will be over – it’s just a matter of time. Exponential growth is a wonderful thing! “”"”"
Rather odd way to look at things. If humans ever reach the point that they will go into space in great numbers it will be because of matured private space efforts, which American companies are most likely to be successful at. That being the most likely scenario for a human breakout off the planet, it would America that leads the way, as Spain and Portugal once did a half millenium ago.
39. NahnCee:
Once humans get into space, the cowboys, gunslingers and pioneers will be outta here, leaving you lamoid leftists who want to live off the sweat of everyone else behind.
Nahncee, I think I are in love.:) Well said!
ledger asked: “This is transparent geopolitical manipulation by certain power brokers. Who those power brokers are is a good question. Are they a huge group of bedraggled hippies so doped-up they can’t see the trees from forest? Are they a group of rabid Kossacks that live for domination and power? Are they a group of shrewd state sponsored players who have been hired to bring America to its knees?”
At the risk of being branded one of those “Fundamentalist” “Xtians” and in keeping with the theme of Constantinople’s fall to the Turks…There is wisdom to be found in the experiences of those who navigated troubled waters before us, as there is from those who believed in a power greater than that of our own invention.
Matthew 13-16
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Right now, I think the odds are less than even that the US will ever recover its might – you have too many different rent-seeking factions fighting over a shrinking pie, and it doesn’t seem to be abating anytime soon.
Somebody mentioned on this thread (James@13) that the Constitution would require a moral and religious people for it to be sustained. I would argue you don’t have such a people anymore, and will never gain it back. This inevitably leads to the demise of the US, for a democracy cannot operate effectively under such lousy conditions – low average intelligence, poor education vicious cycles. Detroit and California is your future.
Linbeck@36,
China, OTOH, is interesting because they HAVE the favorable demographics to build a lasting democracy… if they ever get around to it. As for flexibility, just look at Hong Kong and Taiwan(despite their soap opera politics). Democracy can do wonders for the chinese when they’re ready. And they’re slowly but surely shedding their old attitudes in favor of new ones.
And the final strategic objective determined by central planning may yet be a good method, especially if it places space or world conquest as a priority, and everything else (e.g. market liberalization) falls within the scope of this ultimate objective. The state can absorb research costs far better than the private sector ever can, and private sector space efforts may find themselves bought over by the chinese state offering more funds for development.
Trust me, the chinese know that central plans don’t work anymore. They’re just trying to figure out what to replace central planning with, and how to accomplish it.
38. Robinsolana:
“So the question is; another NASA dinosaur, or let a 100 flowers bloom?”
Your alternative view is very encouraging, Robinsolana.
Can you throw in a few more keywords so I can search?
I’d sure look at investing a bit in anyone with a sporting chance of getting us out there without NASA’s heavy approach.
On NASA…
I have been in the space launch business since 1978, folks. And it is very simple.
NASA did exactly what the politicians wanted them to do. And the politicians wanted them to do no more than that. Thus JFK’s stirring challenge to “Place a man on the surface of the Moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of this decade” proved to be both a triumph in political terms and an absolute disaster in terms of actual space exploration and exploitation.
Once the political drive disappeared, NASA went into self-protection mode and its main objective became protecting its empire. Griffin was the first NASA Admin to admit this (coded language, but clear as a bell to some of us) – and then proceeded to revive the old Apollo business while at the same time doing the politically necessary by protecting the various Congressionally favored empires.
Go over to thespacereview.com and look up the articles “When about time equals too late” and “Not in our stars.” That will give you a start on the truth.
…that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it. They remain blind to the end, toasting each other, offering one another meaningless Golden Party Badges. Madmen in a madhouse.
Include the Congress of the United States in this select group, because they are leading the nation into oblivion. How sad, God help us!
We are indeed living in times in which everything is pregnant with its contrary, where old orders are rent asunder and new ones emerge screeching from the womb. All that is solid melts into air, and everything sacred profaned. In such times the ideological decks are reshuffled, and basic agreement on the signifigance of events — and even words — is lost. Wretchard at #7 talks of Obama as a front man for an American aristocracy, the ancien regime of “permanent privelege,” and a good argument can be made to bolster his contention. Just look to Geithner, Summers and the many Goldman Sachs connections, the corporate donations to Obama, and the old school realists who abandoned the GOP ship along with the little princes of privelege (I’m thinking Christopher Buckley here).
But Nahncee at #39 hints of Leftists who want to redistribute wealth to “Chicago’s ghettos,” a critique that has also been applied cogently to Obama. Can both be true? Are the epigones of permanent privelge secretly engaged in schemes of redistribution, buying off the poor in a war against insurgents in the middle class? Really? Is Obama a marxist or corporate shill, Muslim or Christian, Hawaiian or Indonesian, Usurper or prophet of new Amerika, hawk or defeatist dove? I know my own suspicions, as do you your own dear reader, but we can find many to argue the other side with no hope for reason or consensus. Some days I just want to chalk it up to the Babel Construction Co. and Good Intentions Pavers, Inc.
Bob Murphy starts this thread by asserting: “I wonder what Barry’s people will do, given their intense hatred of the real America.” Maybe Bob’s right, and Barry’s people really do hate “real America” (but not the psuedo-America of Chicago, I presume). . . but Barry won 52.9% of the popular vote, and with growing Hispanic populations joining the Demcoratic party, what happens when the “real America” becomes a permanent minority?
IIRC less than 25% of the population had any participation in the American Revolutionary War. Actual combatants were less than that. The total number of Communists in the US is quite small but they have been able to magnify their power over the years. The numbers who would oppose them are greater than theirs.
Politically the tide has ebbed and is going out for Obama, he has lost enough of the swing voters to kill him in 2012. The possibility of loss in 2010 is becoming greater and greater by both internal and external polls.
A number of their moves smacks of desperation. I think of Dennis Miller saying something on the order of, “It not that I love Sarah Palin all that much, it is who her enemies are and the fearful way they react to her.”
The move by the FTC to rule and regulate blogs tells me the “Left” is feeling the heat from them.
I don’t pretend we are safe in the immediate future but there are intelligent people out there who oppose the “left”
#49 RMT:
“”"” and with growing Hispanic populations joining the Demcoratic party, what happens when the “real America” becomes a permanent minority? “”"”
Is the ‘Hispanic’ population really growing anymore? I believe the illegal constituent is ebbing, and the birth rates south of our border has gone down dramatically. Also, the African American population appears to be in virtual stasis, while Asian numbers (both East and South Asian) are still relatively small, though visible. Contrary to ‘conventional wisdom’ projections, white Americans will still constitute a solid majority well into this century.
BUT . . . . if amnesty is granted to illegals, and they are given the fast track to citizenship, that would indeed create a dramatic increase in Democratic Party voter rolls.
Wretchard,
The fall of Constantinople was just a blip on the radar, except for the citizens of that failed state. To prepare for and regroup from a fall of our state would require an organized effort of herculean proportions. That presumes a Leader. We don’t seem to have it right now.
Your thesis, if that is what your post forwards, is that there may be a fall or a great leap forward. Either requires a populace of builders. The question is, do we still have those people in our midst?
My father, before he died, apologized for his generation’s coddling of their children and the inevitable consequences of their “largesse”. We are approximately 3 generations into that largesse, founded in the greatest generation’s desire for comfort for their children. The goals were charitable, the outcome pre-ordained. It’s time we righted that loving, but wrong-minded thinking.
marymcl, re NASA, happy to.
Some of this will get you out of the Obama miasma.
Remember the Carter gloom and miasma?
Key words for space?
Try:
Bigelow space hotels
xprize cup lots of stuff
Bezos spaceport he has the money
Paul Allen he does too
space-elevator my favorite long shot
space solar power they are signing contracts in Japan
Gerald Bull HARP cheap simple hardware, but there were issues with Mossad
It’s a big world out there and sometimes the focus on the Obama wreaking crew can get you down.
America has been in far worse situations.
Think Lincoln, think FDR both pro and con
think 1812
Let’s Roll
Thanks RS.
Very interesting stuff.
Lovely littoral, “Obama wreaking crew”. Is that as in wreaking havoc?:)
@40. marymcl:
Quote:”He is abandoning our people in the field and for that he should never, ever be forgiven.”
My memory of events fades with age, but this is how I recall events: Congress abandoned us and the Vietnamese people in Vietnam. I never forgot. And after we help push the Russians out of Afghanistan we abandoned the Afghan people and our allies and that begat the Taliban and the result of that was 911 and our involvement there now. Apparently abandonment of our troops and allies is a time honored tradition. I have no doubt that it will happen again. There’s no substitute for victory. We have a habit of stirring up crap and then crying when the going gets tough. Especially true of our leaders in D.C.
Sigh!
@53 Robinsolana
“It’s a big world out there and sometimes the focus on the Obama wreaking crew can get you down.
America has been in far worse situations.
Think Lincoln, think FDR both pro and con
think 1812
Let’s Roll”
Wise words, and worth remembering. Thanks
#56 and #52 – ditto. Thanks
The novel “Gone with the Wind” just is such a story as the fall of Constantinople or of Berlin. The plot is of a young headstrong girl, Scarlett, who loses her husband in the war and sits in Atlanta while Sherman takes the city, escaping just in time to the family plantation.
Reconstruction brings more troubles as the Federals’ policy was to dethrone the Southern Aristocracy. Sherman’s Memoirs are quite clear about that. In the end, a New South arises a hundred years later and is now the most virile and active region in the United States.
The Yankees learned something from Southern Reconstruction and, I think, applied that knowledge to the reconstruction of Germany, Japan, and Iraq. The keys are showing mercy and rising up an alternate elite.
Now, can the New South reconstruct the liberal North?
Fletcher, where do we go beyond Earth? Let’s talk reality. The fact remains that human beings cannot ‘survive’ for extended periods in the weighlessness of space. Our bodies are designed to function with gravity. Calium leaches out of our bones, our muscles atophy and there are a whole host of other problems when we are subjected to extended periods of weighlessness. Then there is the cruel reality of the pure physics of getting off this rock. It is currently, and for the foreseeable future, exceedingly expensive. Otherwise, we would have had viable commerical interestes, independent of government, taking folks up for a view of the Earth operating right now. Then there is the question of where do we go? The Moon? What for? Venus? Mars? Where? Mars is the most likely candidate, but to turn it into a place where humans would want to live their entire lives would require massive terraforming, something we as a race have a lot to learn and achieve before attempting it. So until we can get off this rock easily and cheaply, until we find a way of traveling in space at speeds exceedingly fast (.25 light speed and beyond), we are stuck on this rock. Sorry, it’s a nice fantasy, but one that is very unlikely to be achievable for a very long time.
As to space travel, chemical rockets won’t get us very far. They might work for the moon but for Mars and beyond you will need nuclear powered transportation.
Nixon killed the “ready for flight test” nuke in 1972 or so. Today, good luck even getting the highly enriched uranium you’d need to continue development work Governments all have this material locked down so without government sponsorship, it ain’t gonna happen.
So yes, governments control space.
Another great post. One that does what the author intends. To get people to use their head for something other than decisions about mundane things.
Exceptional commentors here as has been for the several years I have been visiting and reading here. But one thing bothers me a little about some here. They “get it” and they have clairity of though and even great ideas that actually could be implemented in various venues and ways.
But…sometimes I feel that they are very hesitant to actually do anything in the real sense in the real world outside of the net.
To give #10 the reason I’m posting in this thread, he said:
“This is transparent geopolitical manipulation by certain power brokers. Who those power brokers are is a good question. Are they a huge group of bedraggled hippies so doped-up they can’t see the trees from forest? Are they a group of rabid Kossacks that live for domination and power? Are they a group of shrewd state sponsored players who have been hired to bring America to its knees? I suspect the latter. But, time will tell.
This is not so much a question in my mind as it is fact. And I really see no need to narrow down to who or what they are. I and many others know that they are enemies in the real sense of the word.
I’ve commented in another thread my feelings on this and in in this thread also.
I also belong to several groups on the net and one group from all over Texas that are not just talking about the hard times to come but have come together for our mutual protection. This group has one overriding stated purpose. To protect our families and to assure their welfare not just in the short term but over as many years as possible. You can call it a Home defense group, if you want. It has taken a lot of money over the last year or so that we have been working together. No, we are not any kind of subversive group, although after the SHTF, I’m sure that is what we will be branded.
The point is we are not idly sitting by but preparing for the worse. If nothing happens we have made good investments and such that can be used in other ways that will benefit us still.
We also have plans to get the voters registered that aren’t and get those that have no way to the polls. But we really don’t think that honest Americans will be able to overcome the voter fraud that is going to not just be rampant but the norm in the coming elections.
We may all go down in the end but it will not come cheaply to our enemies.
Papa Ray
Central Texas
My first comment on this thread, that I regrettably am late to, went into moderation. The work of Captain Morrison’s son and of Mr Coppola got to Limbo ahead of the rest of us.
For 800 years Constantinople absorbed the fiercest assaults of Islam. That shelter permitted Western Civilization to survive and Western Europe to grow strong enough to eventually overtake the Caliphate. Given that the shelter that the United States provided for the same region of Western Europe over the last 65 years has produced no such happy effect we should consider what the Byzantines and Western Europeans, Romans and Franks to the Moslems, did right and what we have done wrong by comparison.
#59 Tarnsman
With all due respect, you show a lack of vision. People don’t need to live on a planet. There could be huge artificial structures made from asteroids that would spin and provide, from centrifugal force, the “gravity” needed.
And how much gravity is needed to maintain bone structure? I don’t know. But if you have to live on a planet or moon, and if the moon or Mars, for example, has sufficient gravity to do so, there are things that could be done that don’t involve terraforming. You want a fair sized living area, protected from radiation? Set off a clean nuke deep under the ground. You get a glass lined dome. Provide light, and provide the right mix to fill them, and you can have a working ecology. Not big enough? Set off several or many bombs close to one another and build tunnels between the domes.
And in regards to the technical difficulties of getting off “this rock” its more a matter of will than anything else. Look at Project Orion. Its 1960′s technology, but it could throw a payload the size of an aircraft carrier into orbit. Its not a problem of technology, its a problem of politics.
36;
L3.
Re China:
We “see” China, and like the blind men, feel different things:
We “see” uber-capitalistic factories that cut prices to the bone, cut worker safety worse than any 19th century sweat-shop master.
We “see” communist leaders intent on keeping “control”, by not allowing any dissent.
We “see” Chinese, given the chance to work in carefully controlled coastal places, produce prodigiously.
We “see” corruption beyond comprehension in leadership.
We “see” a government that has carefully controlled currency to sell products cheaply.
We “see” a government buying T bills to bankrupt America.
We “see” a country where Christianity is rapidly growing, soon to produce more believing Christians than are in America.
We “see” a government so “powerful”, it controls the internet.
What we fail to see is the weakness this shows. The leadership is hanging on to control. They don’t have a plan to allow freedom for people to own dollars. They don’t have a plan to allow true freedom of religion. They cannot allow the people to hold them accountable for their corruption. They cannot allow transparent economic information to be free. Anyone who trusts any information released by China is a fool. A corrupt society is a con game. We have our own, compared to China, it is nothing.
China may find a way to freedom. Until they do, their corrupt communist leadership will never be able to allow the freedom we still have in America.
Remember one thing. America’s soldiers do not swear an oath to the president. They swear an oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. There is also that part about obeying the orders of the president, but it is subject to them being lawful orders.
We do stand a crossroads. Yet we always have. Choices we make, sometimes of seeming minor import, may echo down the cathedrals of history. Imagine if in the 20′s we scraped what became the Saratoga and Lexington. A very different war in 1942. It easily could have happened.
It is likely to prove more difficult to “lose” the Afghan war than people realize. Remember how few American forces it took to originally defeat the Talyban. This is not Vietnam, where the North had major suppliers in China and Soviet Union, and once we withdrew, a conventional military attack could work. As long as we remain able to veto victory by the Taliban, the people of the country will be able to choose freedom or slavery. It will never be up to us. It is up to Afghanistan.
It ain’t over
If Obama supports at least one of General McChrystal’s options, and allows the General to work his plan, then I would have no choice but to support the General, as long as the means to do the work exist and are made available.
That means supporting the president’s man and helping the president see a better economic design, a more just societal method and a more efficient governmental path to the future he envisions. The question is then what will it take for the president to realize it is indeed his policies that are failing, and his advisors who have given him stale and unsound advise which the people of the United States neither agree with nor voted for.
Afghanistan and Pakistan too can still be won, and so too can the principals of the government of the United States of American be not undone by this administration. We do not have to convince the president or even the congress, just the majority of the people.
Although it has probably been discussed here, there are two factions in DC backing their Afghanistan position by passing around books on the Vietnam War.
0bama is pushing the book ‘Lessons in Disaster’ which describes Vietnam as an unwindable war driven by gun-ho military hawks. The Pentagon is pushing the book ‘A Better War’ which indicates the US had successfully turned around the Vietnam War but lost support in Washington. Both books make interesting reading.
But, I find it uncomfortable that 0bama and the rest of his “enlightened team” are pushing a book about failure. This comes just before the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to 0bama. This is quite a coincidence – or is it.
[WSJ]
The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books — both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts. The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now.
The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight. It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.
The two books — “Lessons in Disaster,” on Mr. Obama’s nightstand, and “A Better War” on the shelves of military gurus — have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
See: Why books matter
http://tinyurl.com/ylfozt4
The USA isn’t anywhere near a last stand as a nation.
Are we then talking about a last stand in Afghanistan?
But maybe 0bama and the leftards are right, that 40,000 more troops will make little difference – in the absence of removing the elephant in the living room, overly restrictive ROE that treat only the active Taliban as legitimate targets. Either culturally, or militarily, or both, we must be far more aggressive – read that as aggressively self-protective – or we really would be asking our armed forces to act as sacrificial lambs to our inchoate intuition that we ought to be doing *something*, even if we aren’t clear on just what.
All this talk of flying the coop and leaving the planet is interesting, but why let the leeching class have this lovely planet? Don’t forget we live on a planet with a radius of ~4000 miles, and where only the outermost 4 miles or so, or 0.1% of the planet is used. Seems like robotic mining of the lower levels of the crust is a fairly realistic possibility. And don’t forget that except for fossil fuels we don’t really “consume” resources as much as rent them: When my old Saturn was ready for retirement the Pb from the battery, the Pt/Rh from the converter, the Cu of the radiator, all the Al and Fe, etc. were all more or less readily available for use somewhere else.
And nuke power reactors can turn that 99.7% of unfissionable U-238 found in nature into fissionable Pu-239- how cool is that? And to think some think it’s waste? Not very “green”, if you ask me.
I for one have no intention of handing this planet over to anyone.
Flying the coop… No, not flying the coop, it’s either declination or ascension…
There was a prize in Berlin that was worth a couple hundred thousand lives to the Soviets: the Gestapo’s files.
Insanity rules in Washington as seemingly every foolish policy and plan is promoted at great cost to the productive capacity of this nation. All we need to do is develop our own natural resources and embrace a tax policy that provides incentives for production and innovation. Who will administer the slap that brings this nation back to its senses?
Hitler was Austrian, Stalin was Georgian and Obama apologizes to world for the United States.
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You, If You Demand It
If you have not yet heard of the horror movie “Paranormal Activity,” you will soon.
It is about to become the first major studio film to be released nationwide as the result of online requests from the public.
The Guns of Constantinople
Only a very rich sovereign could afford such a weapon. It’s very existance was a master stroke of psychological warfare.
#64 Presbypoet
Behind those aspects of China you mentioned there is another. By chance this afternoon I talked to a former partner of mine who now works for a department in Texas. In Houston, they are hosting the travelling exhibit from China, “Terracotta Soldiers”. He took his family to see it. While they were there, they noted a hallway leading off of the exhibit. There was a Chinese man in a suit standing at the entrance, obviously only letting those pass who were authorized.
One of the things that those in my line of work learn to do, is to read people. And to tell when you are being read.
My old partner looked at that guy, and knew he was secret police. He had the bearing and body language of a member of the SD or of a Chekisti. And when the guy met his eyes, he could tell that the guy knew instantly that he was a cop.
Keep in mind that the views of China we are allowed to see, and those that slip out, are backed by those willing to use ruthless force and who wish us ill.
I will leave to others to discuss whether that particular malady has spread here.
Subotai Bahadur
#61 Papa Ray lays out an example of people trying to solve the problem without waiting until it’s too late. That’s probably the smart thing. I do believe in accurately targeting the agent provocateurs. I would expand upon it now but I have family matters to take care of. It will have to wait until another thread.
marymcl@ 40:
How do patriotic American Exceptionalists “support the troops” when their mission becomes less clear with every day of dithering and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and ability of the highest levels of their chain of command evaporates?
Eventually, Oath Keepers attempting to fulfill their duty to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, will run up against other Oath Keepers who see the older Oath Keepers as domestic enemies.
As the One eats his $100 per lb. beef…as he sacks America and drinks from her golden cups…as he looks down his nose with his upturned head, upon all his freedom loving underlings, words are coming! Yes, even now they are coming into focus. He doesn’t see them, however, for they are not words reflected off teleprompter glass. No, but words of old…words from the deep:
MENE MENE TEKEL PARSIN !!!
“The road backward leads to a new aristocracy, old but ever stylish in an sterile way; and the other to a world in which greater freedom than hitherto imaginable is possible.” It is not freedom that people seek, it is certainty.
Perhaps in time the dark ages will be thought of as including our own–George Lichtenberg
I recently had a sign of hope.
I was recently in a group of 12 people, strangers from all over the United States. After a few days, when we got to get to know each other, I learned that six of them absolutely hated Obama and were willing to join a revolution against communism in the United States.
Obama should understand that many people are VERY opposed to his tax-the-middle-class-policies and are looking for ways to bring down this socialistic administration.
There is a real dissatisfaction beneath the surface of this supposedly decadent and flaccid country.
You guys and gals moan and groan, all the while ignoring our young, progressive, vibrant leaders.
Pelosi & Reid
Pelosian Reed (sounds like a troublesome lawn invader)
Shriveled Prunes, both of’em.
Not enough juice between’em to fill a thimble.
On the other hand, if your garden wants a little manure…
presbypoet@64,
Excellent post. There is often a gap between perception and reality. We “see” what confirms our preconceived notions – what psychologists call “confirmation bias.”
It appears that many who want America to fall “see” an unstoppable China. Fair enough, and they may be right.
But I think you’re closer to the mark. I see 1 billion people, of which only about 15% have a pension, who are getting older and older every day, and don’t have enough kids to replace them. So, without children or pensions, they’re obsessive savers, socking away as much money as they can, hoping it will be enough to keep them from penury.
It seems to me that this is the fundamental fear that keeps the Chinese regime in power. If the Chinese people actually felt confident about their long-term financial well-being, the government would fall. But it is probably rational to support any form of stability – no matter how corrupt – if the alternative is perceived to be the kind of chaos and disruption that accompanied Mao.
Still, I guess my fundamental point stands: having been told at various times that Germany, the USSR, Japan, China, India, etc. will crush the US for this or that reason, it seems rational to view these claims with skepticism.
Having lived in Europe and Asia at various times, I remain awestruck with how much Americans can produce. Everyone criticizes our consumption, but man, we can make some great stuff (and provide some great services).
It would be a shame if we sacrificed this capability on the altar of tranzi progressivism. But one thing’s for sure: there is no country (or group of countries) that can force us to change. We are simply too powerful, as measured by the capability of our citizenry.
We can survive anything except a suicide.
Cheers,
L3
Papa Ray @61,
But…sometimes I feel that they are very hesitant to actually do anything in the real sense in the real world outside of the net.
Don’t paint with too broad a brush, pards. There’s more happening than meets the eye…
Cheers,
L3
L3:
Here is another link discussing how quickly the population of China is aging:
“The ageing in Asia is particularly dramatic for China: between 2000 and 2050, the proportion of people aged 65 and older will rise from 7% to 23%, numbering more than 332 million in 2050 in China, far greater than the combined elderly populations of North America, Europe and Japan.”
Also, didn’t the wise benevolent leaders of the CPOC pass a law making it illegal for any Chinese couple to carry to term than one child? I’m not entirely sure, but is that law still enforced?
L3
One of the most important instruction sets for the universe is that I must learn what I don’t know. Since that is a paradox, (I will never know what I don’t know), always remain humble. Yet in the face of knowing you will never know, don’t fear to act. Not fearing to decide, knowing you could wait forever for “perfect” information, and never strike while the iron is hot. Just ask Lincoln about some of his generals, who never were ready.
An prime example is how the Germans in 1943 delayed a month attacking at Kursk, thinking they would be stronger, yet in that month, the Russians improved their defenses much more.
Regarding China. I think Christians in China will change that empire the same way the Roman empire was changed. There will be a tipping point.
Afghanistan, as long as we remain, has a chance. In some ways we may be better off with a limited footprint. A focus on special forces, air support, and helping the Afghan people develop hope, (true hope). A victory for the people will be far more complex, and more simple, but it takes time. Try twenty years.
How long have we been in Bosnia? How long in Korea? You don’t win a g. war quickly. You can lose quickly if you give up.
presbypoet,
I’d actually take it a step further; you will never know what you don’t know, but it may not matter anyway. Your actions – and the actions of others – change the state of reality, so things you may have thought you needed to know, you may no longer need to know.
It’s kinda like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applied to human affairs. You can’t measure without effecting (especially if you’re the President of the United States). But that’s not an excuse for inaction, any more than the HUP is an excuse for abandoning physics.
Cheers,
L3
Oysters and Pearls
Lindbergh left Long Island in 1927
He thumbed his nose at gravity
And climbed into the heavens.
When he returned to earth that night
Everything had changed
for the pilot and the planet
Everything was rearranged
We’re a pretty mixed up bunch
Of crazy human beings
It’s written on our rocketships
And in early cave wall scenes
How does it happen?
How do we know?
Who sits and watches?
Who does the show?
Some people love to lead
Some refuse to dance
Some people play it safely
Others take a chance
Still, it’s all a mystery
This place we call the world
Where most live as oysters
While some become pearls
Now Elvis was the only man
from North East Mississippi
Who could shake his hips
And still be loved by
Rednecks, cops and hippies
It’s something more than DNA
That tells us who we are
Its method and magic
We are of the stars
Some never fade away
Some crash and burn
Some make the world go round
Others watch it turn
Still, it’s all a mystery,
This place we call the world
Most are fine as oysters
While some become pearls
– Jimmy Buffet
YouTube – Oysters and Pearls
Ledger @66,
Interesting that one of the votes Sen Joe Biden cast early in his political Career was the denial of funds to the Republic of Viet Nam. After the Paris Accords determined the timetable for US troop participation and withdraw Congress in 1973 initiated and the Senate concurred in cutting off funds for air operations in Indochina. In 1974 military and economic aid to South Vietnam was drastically sliced. Biden was sworn into the senate in 1973.
If that book they’re passing around the West Wing includes passages about the failure of the Great Society due to competition for funding with the Viet Nam War, there may be the rational used to pull the plug on the Global war on Afghanistan/Pakistan (GWAP). I doubt in the minds of the Democrats and Peace-no-crats, the military and governance COIN knowledge and expertise gained during the past eight plus years in Iraq and Af/pak, or the opportunity which is slowly presenting itself in Pakistan will carry much weight.
The decision will be based on the misapplication of economic principles, leading of course to the correct conclusion that we cannot have European Socialism and fight a war too but with the preference being for the Socialism opposed to the long term safety issues which would arise if we abandon AFPak like we did the Republic of Vietnam.
Convincing the WH that Afghanistan is a worthy fight is not the problem, convincing them that the treasure and blood spent is more worthwhile than continuing on with a socialist experiment already poorly started and certain to impoverish the nation and more of the world. An appeal to president Obama’s vanity by telling him that he has the opportunity to win where no other force in modern or ancient history, save Alexander the Great, has ever been victorious. might work.
Encouraging a review of the statistical array that has led him to utter unsubstantiated conclusions about the effects of TARP or the Stimulus are important, and demonstrating scientifically the fallacy of relying on government spending to lift more than a select few boats is imperitive. For it lays out in black and white the rational for not only the president but the nation, to understand why we think persident Obama has been tricked into lying by his teleprompter.
Meanwhile prepare for the worse should economic failure accelerate in an inverted (upside-down) hockey stick like fashion.
L3, the Chinese have long range planning in place for everything but Whiskey’s dearth of females. How flexible do you think they’re likely to become?
Cannoneer No, 4, I think it will be a matter of timing, that will determine how much conflict will be there on the matter of oaths. That and troop morale.
We have the answer today on the planned Europeanization and deconstruction of the US Armed Forces.
Obama says he will end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
My concern is not with the policy but with the intention behind it.
In other news:
1) Iconic Hummer brand sold to Chinese manufacturer.
2) Polish President ratifies EU reform treaty.
The last time that I am aware of in history that a great and powerful civilization choose to adopt Pacifism and abandon productivity in the face of outside pressure was the Khmer who collapsed before the Thai and Viet invasions after converting to Theravedra Buddhism. Will people look at our ruins in 800 years and wonder, “How could they?”
Cannoneer No4: #77
I, like you, I think, have from the outset opposed the idea of even trying turn Afghanistan into Vermont without trees. I think it is utterly pointless at best – and dangerous at worst – to expend too much effort on the fact there are some nutjobs in the mountains there that plot our destruction. In fact, the evidence is that Bin Laden wanted us to send massive forces into the Pashtun hinderlands to be ground up by the terrain and the terrorists – and at the same time make him the focus of a sympathetic figure throughout Islam.
Holding Kabul, sending in special operations FAC’s and keeping a few B-52’s at Diego Garcia busy can get the job done as well as it needs to be.
BUT – we now have a President that did campaign on the basis of making Pastunland into Ben and Jerryland. And SECSTATE Condi and the rest are right that our failure to do just that will be trumpeted into losing the War on Terror by Al Queda and every two bit tin pot dictator on the planet. So given this, how do we support our troops, encourage our commanders to display the proper warrior spirit, NOT get our military ground up under absurd ROE and NOT support the flaming idiot who set all of this up and says that open homosexuals belong in our military?
Right now, I have no idea. All of the above would make an unwieldy protest sign.
A dozen guys on horses, and a couple of dozen in SUV’s helped the Northern Alliance run out the Taliban quick like. The turning point occurred when the ’52′s started dropping Iron Bombs liberally.
Rummy had a quick in and out strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq.
The special forces guys were talking about Big Army losing the population in ’02.
SECSTATE Powell and Condi both involved in bringing about the long wars/occupations.
I miss Rumsfield. I wonder if he’s available to run for office. With John Bolton.
First, picture nukes going off in one or two or three Western cities, most probably American cities, like DC NY and LA. The world order will topple. There will be little about that new post-nuclear world that would be familiar to most of us. No additional bombs need go off. We don’t need to see the entirety of these metropolises destroyed as in some Hollywood production. A mere few square miles of uninhabitable real estate in a few choice locations will effectively permanently obliterate $50 or $100 trillion in Western wealth. The entire edifice upon which our civilization is built would crash to the ground. This is what nukes in the hands of Muslims will inevitably lead to.
The Taliban already has nukes. It’s called Pakistan. Soon the Shiites will have their “Islamic bomb” in Iran. I fear there is already no going back on the inevitable use of a Muslim nuke in the heart of the infidel West since we never stopped Pakistan. Iran is only chapter two. Soon (if a few nukes haven’t already fallen into Saudi or UAE hands from their client state of Pakistan…) other Arabs will own nukes or control them. Most in the West cannot conceive that all we have know can be shattered by our enemies.
I feel strongly that posts like Promethea’s No. 80 need to be addressed directly, if only out of respect for our hosts.
This is an international forum, and I think it’s important to encourage the free exchange of ideas. On the other hand, most countries have laws against the open advocacy of violence, insurrection, etc.
For the record, I specifically disavow the use of violence to overthrow the government. Anyone posting any such advocacy must be regarded as utterly irresponsible and most likely an agent provocateur, intent upon creating suspicion and hostile response to Pajamas Media, our gracious host, and to free speech in general.
In marked contrast, the theoretical consideration of how best to respond to the complete breakdown of civil and social order is so manifestly crucial, that it must be protected. Noting that the entire world is hurtling that direction like the Powell-Hyde Trolley after a cable parting…
we need to thoroughly dissect all the probabilities.
Faramir said as he questioned Sam and Frodo after encountering them in Ithilien, that as his arrows hit nearer the truth, so he shot wide of the mark.
While we are still unconstrained from exercising our constitutional rights to do so in territories of the United States, we need to do so, WITHIN THE LAWS. Those laws, and any subsequent laws promulgated under the legitimate structures of this nation, CAN NOT make it a criminal offense to investigate, discuss, or protest illegal behavior, criminal activities, malfeasance of office, or high crimes and misdemeanors by our elected officials, or their appointees. It cannot be illegal or any disservice to the nation to explore remedies to illegal, criminal, or simply irresponsible behavior by those officials or their agents.
At least that’s true for citizens of the United States of America, for the time being.
It may not be so for subjects of regimes in other parts, whose governments may not have a long tradition of freedom of speech and participatory government.
Certainly the brilliant geniuses of the mess-I-ah are completely aware of the high regard our Islamic allies AND adversaries have for homosexuals. Surely they have taken into account that in the Islamic nations where Sharí’ah governs the daily lives of all, homosexuals are commonly executed after trial and conviction for their conduct…
Our brilliant and worthy leaders MUST certainly have excellent reasons for announcing to our wildly homophobic “allies” that our soldiers – who live and walk among their people – will now include openly homosexual members. Will our brave and glorious Prezzie have each service person wear a special ID patch proudly announcing the bearer’s sexual orientation?
Certainly, the standards we set for ourselves are worth sharing with our allies!
Maybe this is our Most High and Irreproachable Leader’s clever plan for bringing Islam to its knees, since undeniably, any mistreatment of U.S. armed service personnel based on sexual preference (like for instance, beheading, de-balling, hanging, et cetera) will occasion serious annoyance and affront among U.S. Gay, Lesbian, and Trans-gender persons and their sympathizers.
You touch our peeps, and you will be SORRY, dudes.
Cannoneer and Doug,
What effect did TORA BORA have on our involvement in Afghanistan and consequent decision to stay and let big army lose the population?
My take in the wake of the frustration and knowledge that Bin Laden and the Taliban both had just skipped over the border was certain (although I thought then and still believe OBL is in Iran, without any substantiation or evidence.) What then, say thanks guys and pull out? Allow the Taliban to reconstitute and return with a vengence? Invade Pakistan? What would you have done? We couldn’t get DoS Guys enough in there to staff anything much less outreach to the country side, and there isn’t enough SOF in the world to sit in every hamlet and act as a liaison to the tribes. the 52′s were too few and the cost too great so we’ve improvised and sent UAV’s in against the guys in Pakistan.
The results, despite the MSM and PSM have been devastating to the Taliban (and Al Queda) and effectively forced the government of Pakistan to get off the pot, without setting off a nuclear Holocaust or losing “friendly” control of the Paki nukes. The pressure is on Pakistan to perform now from and this is most important, the Afghani and Pakistani citizens who could care less about the US presence in either country so long as they are killing Al Queda and Taliban and who do care about their own hides.
I suppose you could say it is all Bush’s fault, but I wouldn’t want president Obama to be seen as embracing another of President Bush’s policies.
So did I miss something or is eliminating the long term terrorist threat of the Taliban and ISI not a good thing.
Mr. Doodslag makes a very good point. Even a series of attacks with mere “dirty bombs” would have decades-long consequences, and this is precisely because the Leftward scurrying rodents have done such a fine job of painting any sort of nuclear energy as PURE EVIL.
Here’s a link to a relevant study Cesium Radiation Dispersal Disaster in Goiania, Brazil. It’s similar to an incident in Mexico which I first read about in an article in Discover Magazine a number of years back.
Here’s a web article describing the contamination that spread through Mexico and the U.S. after a Mexican hospital carelessly scrapped a Cobalt-60 gamma ray generator it had acquired a “black market transaction” in the first place.
This excerpt from the article describes “the fiasco that began 21 years ago in 1984 when guards at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratories near Santa Fe, New Mexico, detected a truckload of rebar from Old Mexico contaminated by radioactive Cobalt-60.
It is a twisted tale typical of the bi-national boundary line’s environmental predicament. A U.S. gamma radiation chamber sent illegally to Mexico was scrapped in Ciudad Juarez with other metal, which it contaminated. The contaminated metal was made into the rebar and shipped for sale in the United States. Only then was it discovered to be dangerously radioactive, and it was returned to Mexico for confinement.”
This article appears to have been written by an anti-nuclear activist, and it’s revealing that the author spends not a single word on the actual suffering of real Mexican peasants who handled the radioactive materials and suffered terrible burns, and the well-known effects of radiation exposure. She goes on to assert that the contamination of construction materials that ended up being used in shopping centers and other buildings will cause “INCALCULABLE” suffering from cancers and other radiation effects, and she invokes, inevitably, the dread memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Chernobyl.
Unfortunately, this is absolutely diagnostic of the reflexive anti-intellectual and dishonest fear-mongering of the Leftist Anti-nuclear idiot. The dangers of ionizing radiation have been known since the earliest decades of the 20th century when doctors failed to protect themselves from their new X-ray equipment’s penetrating rays, and women painting glow-in-the-dark numbers with Radium paint on popular watch dials began suffering horrible cancers after pointing their brush tips with their tongues.
In fact, follow-up studies of Nagasaki, Hiroshima prove that the air-bursts left very little persistent detectible radiation, and after the first weeks after the attack produced almost ZERO subsequent cancers more than would have occurred naturally in a similar population elsewhere. Even Chernobyl, which actually produced FAR MORE FALLOUT than the Hiroshima/Nagasaki blasts, has turned out to have produced lethal radiation sickness almost exclusively among the heroic workers that waded directly into the flaming rubble to contain the disaster in the first 48 hours or so. The region has NOT produced the epidemic of birth defects, leukemias, lymphomas, and cancers that the world was told were inevitable among the hundreds of thousands downwind of the disaster.
So my point is that the irrational fear that has been created by the LEFT absolutely guarantees that any dirty bomb whatsoever, will result in a total depopulation of any city in which the bomb is detonated. It won’t matter if it’s only the radioactive material scraped from a handful of smoke detectors or camera lens brushes… People will decamp, and start wearing lead undies for the rest of their lives.
It’s really critcal to notice that the huge cost of these events was from the clean-up efforts and the follow-up medical exams to try to determine whether people had long-term effects from the exposure. The costs of actually treating medical conditions attributable to radiation were negligible compared with those first two items.
The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Whose ass are you trying to cover, Mad Fiddler?
Wretchard’s? He’s had his big boy pants on since I first ran across him six years ago.
Pajamas Media’s? They’re Enemies of The State-run media and targeted for eventual destruction anyway.
Yours? Do you think your specific disavowal will be considered as extenuating and mitigating circumstances during the sentencing phase of your sedition trial?
Half of Promethea’s dozen are not yet ready:
to think the unthinkable,
to discuss uncomfortable topics
to be associated with ideas that may later be outlawed by illegitimate, tyrannical Powers That Be.
And of those six, four likely never will be.
They’re aren’t many blogs run by former members of an underground resistance movement with a commentariat leavened by former and current practioners of state-sanctioned violence, espionage and psychological warfare.
Here are the makings of an online think tank for The Resistance, whoever they may be, and whatever they’re resisting.
One reason why the United States space program has floundered is that no strategic thinker from NASA has effectively enunciated how a program of manned space exploration achieves key political objectives for the United States.
First of all, NASA’s program of manned exploration must be given a separate appropriation from NASA’s program of unmanned exploration. Taking from Peter to pay Paul only sets Peter and Paul against one another. Secondly, the United States needs to create a new agency of planetary exploration, which would include NOAA, USGS, and NASA’s programs of unmanned exploration of space. Scientists from this superagency (perhaps called the United States Planetary Survey) would find it easy to cooperate with one another, for unmanned exploration is essentially about science and discovering what exists in the rest of the universe.
Next, NASA’s manned exploration of space ought to be recognized for what it is – the projection of political power into space. The principal impetus for NASA’s foray into space was Sputnik and later Soviet public relations stunts. Even if Martian colonization were possible, it’s expensive. The principal reason why one spends national treasure to send people into Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, or some far off asteroid isn’t because it is cost effective – it is to show that one can do it.
Remember, Prince Henry the Navigator did want to find a route to the East Indies. That is true enough. However, he also recognized how excellence in navigation was an excellent route to national prestige in the courts of Europe. His gambit worked.
The principal reason why I support establishing a scientific station on the Moon has nothing to do with uplifting humanity, promoting science, or being the first nation to go into the great black yonder. It’s a power play. The Moon is central to lunar religions. Islam is a lunar religion. There are practical benefits to reminding one’s enemy of one’s own power and his own weakness. It’s a simple reason. If we are serious about defeating al-Qaeda, we would do well to consider that occupying the Moon would cost less than occupying Mecca.
Likewise, establishing a colony on Mars would be expensive. The only reason why any politician would support such an endeavor is if he sees a political benefit from this plan accruing to America’s prestige internationally and his own reputation domestically. Although I do favor the colonization of Mars, I also understand that the only reason to push for such a strategy would be to advance America’s political prestige. If no prestige accrues from such a course of action, the costs become prohibitively expensive.
If the Ptolemaic Empire existed in present day Egypt, I am quite sure that Mars would be Egyptian already. Ordinary Egyptians would be poor and miserable, but they would be so proud of their nation’s achievements and so happy with their cultural and technological superiority that they wouldn’t recognize just how poor and miserable they were. National prestige is nothing to sneeze at, and it is a good reason to do amazing things. Remember, cultural hegemony is a function of national prestige.
As to the People’s Republic of China, the rulers of China have always governed so long as they enjoyed the Mandate of Heaven. When they lost that, they fell from power and, after a period of chaos, new rulers came forth who did have that mandate.
The Confucian priestly class’s job was to help the ruler keep that mandate by advice and administration. The people wanted that stability since chaos killed .
Today, the Communists apparently have that mandate, thanks to the Pax Americana, which has been very good to them and the people of China. Destroy American hegemony and China will likely see hard times. Then the Communists will have to prove their mettle.
Another fly in the China juggernaut ointment – the one child policy seems to be seriously undermining the confucian social matrix. The pampered only sons of the growing middle class and the elite are replacing the old ethos of duty with a sense of entitlement. Even as China develops its economic infrastructure, its cultural advantages erode.
Wretchard again reminds us that the dialectic is implacable. We can oppose Obama, indeed, we must. But, we can’t pretend that our world has not changed. The dilemma of the conservative is that what he conserves is the product of previous dialectics.
M. Doodslag… If we get hit as you speak, we should fall back to Grandma’s Suppertime Rules. Everyone gets a helping first, then those that want seconds may ask.
One boomer, hidden, silent as a grave is all we need. Re-task some MRV’s and light the candle. Surely we have one skipper among them who’d do it.
Alexis: How about we use ORION to haul the Kaaba to the moon?
103. Konyok
The dilemma of the conservative is that what he conserves is the product of previous dialectics.
Conservatives work hard, play hard and when pushed to the extreme- Fight Hard. The tipping point is gradually making it’s way to the point where people are going to have to make the very personal decision of where they stand and what they are going to do.
_________________
One definition: At the heart of Marxist dialectics is the idea of contradiction, with class struggle playing the central role in social and political life. Marx and subsequent Marxists also identify other historically important contradictions, such as those between mental and manual labor and town and country. Contradiction is the key to all other categories and principles of dialectical development: development by passage of quantitative change into qualitative ones, interruption of gradualness, leaps, negation of the initial moment of development and negation of this very negation, and repetition at a higher level of some of the features and aspects of the original state.[Wikipedia]
__________________________
That is the dialectic that everyone needs to be concerned with.
Also, if anyone is interested, here is the PDF of McChrystal’s speech in London. It really is both a simple speech and one full of complexities
Papa Ray
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
80
I recently had a sign of hope.
I was recently in a group of 12 people, strangers from all over the United States. After a few days, when we got to get to know each other, I learned that six of them absolutely hated Obama and were willing to join a revolution against communism in the United States.
Obama should understand that many people are VERY opposed to his tax-the-middle-class-policies and are looking for ways to bring down this socialistic administration.
There is a real dissatisfaction beneath the surface of this supposedly decadent and flaccid country.
The demonstration in DC on 9/12 of this year was the largest of the shows of dissatisfaction among American Citizens of all parties and affiliations. There will be more in the coming years. Each has to be peaceful yet protective of each individuals rights and protective of those who attend. But do not think for a moment that those who are behind this takeover of our Republic will take our dissent and anger without drastic actions and reactions on their part. They will try and use our actions against us, they will try and provoke actions to make us look like the terrorists that in all actuality they are.
So..protest-shout, make speeches, talk to your neighbors, write emails and prepare- but don’t give them a valid or legitimate reason to use it against us. They have the machine behind them to try and stop us, but we have right and truth behind us and we will prevail…one way or the other.
Papa Ray
Central Texas
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
Be kind to your web-footed friends,
Cause a duck may be somebody’s mother.
Be kind the animals in the swamp,
Cause the water is very damp.
If you think that this is the end,
Well, it is.
Ruvy,
Dennis Miller had a pilot on that wrote the book
“Flying Drunk”
about his recovery and redemption.
One of Miller’s hilarious regular callers, and also a pilot, contributed this:
“If you’re flying drunk, and it seems like the room is spinning,
it is!“
Check out Instapundit. He’s got a blurb up on one of the times that National Guard was called out to put down riots (in Mississippi during the Integration efforts in the 60′s), and how they didn’t shoot back at the civilians attempting to kill them. Now why do you suppose Professor Reynolds feels the need to contemplate armed American soldiers in our streets and whether or not they’ll shoot?
It references this NY Times article. Now why do you suppose the Grey Lady feels the need to contemplate armed American soldiers in the streets? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/opinion/28DOYL.html
(BTW, for what it’s worth Mad Fiddler, I agree that your denunciation is out of line and self-indulgent.)
Cannoneer 4, you are right to call me. This is an area worth some discussion, frequently.
I find myself in agreement with Papa Ray in his post No. 106. He spoke far better than I did or could. Part of my life-long problem has been a tendency to be “mealy-mouthed” – old southern phrase.
Hey, of course I’m covering my own ass, and I don’t think for an instant that pseuodonyms will protect citizens from a vengeful and malicious government. The only purpose they can serve is to hide our identities from the most casual and superficial inspection. You know: friends, neighbors, pastors, supervisors, and H.R. staff piously checking to make sure nobody on payroll expresses any politically incorrect ideas.
The tree of Liberty, well watered by the blood of TYRANTS and PATRIOTS, yeah. Can’t be said too often.
Wretchard can certainly exercise his own gate-keeping if he desires – Again, you are absolutely correct; he doesn’t need ME to keep the bullies from kicking sand in people’s faces.
I personally feel it’s counterproductive to bandy bold words of rebellion in these parts. It’s premature, it presumes agreement among all the readers, discourages the un-convinced, conveys a false image of consensus unless someone disputes, and DISSIPATES energy that really needs to be directed to productive use.
I don’t need to have someone on this blog or any other tell me it’s time to act. There are times when statements need to be as plain as possible, and other times that call for oblique phrasing. We each follow our own guidelines for now.
Each person needs to prepare for the coming storm, both in understanding the nature of the conflict, accumulating the tools and skills that will be needed, and helping to build a community that offers some resiliance in relation to the onslaught.
Meanwhile, let’s all exercise our Constitutional rights to the fullest extent possible. This should put the fear of GOD ALMIGHTY into the lying bastards.
“If we are serious about defeating al-Qaeda, we would do well to consider that occupying the Moon would cost less than occupying Mecca.”
—
And none of them pesky suicide bombers to worry about.
…and the VIEW!
Mad Fiddler,
You are correct here. We can expect that Mobys will infiltrate the blogs in an effort to discredit us by posting needlessly inflammatory statements or even attempt to entrap people into making or concurring with statements that can be seen as legally actionable by a hostile prosecutor. Do I think that Holder is capable of being a party to such a tactic? Will a defense plea of entrapment work? Need you ask? We must keep these lines of communication open and look out for each other.
Regarding names. Anything we can do to make it slightly more difficult for anyone with malicious intent is a good thing.
We live in dangerous times. When in the past 100 years have we not? In 1941 & 1942, had Germans and Japanese not made some dumb discisons, we might not have been able to win the war. If Japan gains control of the Pacific, all the ships built in west coast liberty ships would never have been able to sail to the Atlantic to provide the shipping needed to defeat Germany. If the Wasp doesn’t supply Malta with fighters, If the tanker that arrives with critical oil, so low in the water fails to make it. Rommel has enough supplies to break through into Egypt.
That year was full of such events where a single nail might have been enough to twist the time track. For us today to think we live in as near a thing is to imagine Oakland had any chance against the Giants today.
Had Stalin lived, it seems he was planning a nuke war. We may have a few delivered by cargo container, but nothing that would smash civilization. It could be much worse.
In 2004, worried withdrawal from Iraq might happen I started a novel about a near future where America has died, and the Baghdad Caliphate and China fight to divide the world. Our worries today are nothing new for me. After Bush won, i didn’t finish. Perhaps i need to pull it out and move the timeline up 5 years. There is nothing new under the sun. History just rhymes.
I met a man from hope.
No not the cheat.
One who smoked dope.
But ate meat.
But his hope was lie.
He was mere shill.
Selling apology pie.
Wishing America ill.
Hollow fraud selling
red tipped poison.
Media lap dogs yelling
in time of near dead sun.
97. Wadeusaf:
I think if we had dug Osama’s JDAM’d body out of a cave at Tora Bora 8 years ago President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld would still have retained Kandahar Air Field as a lily-pad into which power from the Continental United States and Main Operating Bases in England, Germany and Italy could be projected into Central Asia. That runway was too valuable to be left to the war lord. Much of the in-country command, control and communications for the Tora Bora Operation was being run out of Bagram Air Field, which also would probably have been retained as a lily-pad.
As far as Big Army losing the population, Big Army had a light foot print for an area of operations the size of Afghanistan. IIRC, TF Bayonet/173rd Airborne Brigade in 2005 had all of what is now called Regional Command South and a good chunk of RC East. Too thin on the ground to alienate that many locals.
No, say thanks, guys, and can we have your air fields?
The Taliban were “allowed” to reconstitute because they had safe havens in Pakistan and fellow Pashtuns in the Kabul government playing politics over the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups. When I left we just lumped all the Bad Guys together as “Taliban”. We weren’t all nuanced and differentiating between HiG, Haqqani Network, opium cartels, war lord armies, tribal lashkars and gangs of banditos. If they shot at you, they were Taliban.
Invading the “ally” whose major port is your Sea Port of Debarkation and through whose country your Line of Communications runs, an “ally” with nuclear weapons and Chicom buddies, never sounded like a great idea to me.
I would have formally declared war on Afghanistan. Roll-call vote. I would have appointed a Pro-Consul to rule in Kabul and occupied the country with Northern Alliance and anti-Taliban Pashtun militias, with as many snake eaters as I could get to “mentor” the indigs, and a Ranger Battalion to whack a few to encourage the others. I would have been colonial as hell. Instead of the Afghan National Police there would have been an Afghan Constabulary, officered in the beginning by serving American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, French, Italian and Spanish commissioned and noncomissioned officers seconded to the Afghan service.
You missed something.
15. bogie wheel:
“’Oh, shit’ is the last utterance or thought-flash of the unprepared. Some people are unprepared for the earthly events that end their lives.”
There was one car in front of me in my lane and the lane on my right was full of cars – all of us proceeding at the legal limit. A driver from our right wanted to cross our flow and then make a left turn to proceed in the opposite direction from ours. In an instant, that driver floored it to cross our phalanx of cars, but after getting past the cars on my right, he found he was on a collision course with the cars in the left lane that he apparently did not originally see or simply “prayed” weren’t really there.
———–
Coming home from shopping at my local “survivalist” store last night, I was driving in the middle lane of a four lane (both ways) highway when an unusual occurrence…occurred.
As it was, the car directly in front of me and the offending driver saw each other at the last moment – the guy in front of me swerving left to avoid impact and the offending driver stopping full in my lane as I bore down on him.
Funny thing, and lucky for him, I had already reacted. I saw way in advance looking to my right across both lanes of traffic – a flash indicating something amiss – and the warning to my tired but “ready for combat” brain, I conjured the development of his move into traffic. Even before he was in front of me, I was full-up on my binders, quickly coming to a halt, about 5 feet from him, as his braking maneuver brought him to a stop, directly in front of me. Had I waited for visual confirmation of his arrival in my lane before I applied my brakes, he would have been killed. I would have hit him broadside in the driver’s door area – going at least 45 MPH.
But what tickled me was the look in his eyes, initially gratified that he had missed the first car, only to realize his true good fortune that his survival was maintained by even a second alert driver. That the reactions of two strangers who through their “attention to detail” allowed him a second chance.
His was the true “aw sh*t” moment. MY state of mind was characterized by calm and thankfulness that was quickly carried to God. The whole incident was really quite interesting, and as I prayed to thank God for His part in allowing me to see something so small and act appropriately and quickly in response to that stimulus, I began to feel deep gratitude at how it turned out. I felt no sense of superiority for my actions because I knew that if I had done everything right, but still killed someone, any smugness at my quick reaction would have meant, on balance, nothing.
In re-reading some of what Wretchard has already posted on this topic, it goes to signify that we are today truly living on a knife’s edge, notwithstanding the very dynamic and detrimental changes of the current President. But yet, with respect to the gift of life, we always were and always will be, on the edge.
Cannoneer No. 4,
Thank you for the well reasoned and steady, reply.
First, I don’t disagree with you.
I don’t think it made a bit of difference legally if we roll called the war on Afghanistan or not. Calling for a Loya Jirga should have resulted in their acceptance of our rule (your way) short term, but I know we were rewarding folks for staying out of the fight as well as those who were with us in the fight.
Still your solutions only acknowledge and do not answer the problem of the supplicant and host country that allowed the Taliban to recover. And it is easy to see that Kabul is not the only government with Taliban sympathizers in office and hindering our efforts. I disagree that your solution would have presented a big enough deterrent to the Taliban’s reconstitution in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
It would not be wise to invade, and it would be seen as folly to say thank you and leave. Meanwhile everything our guys (including NATO other foreign forces) have accomplished in Afghanistan is tainted by what has been left undone by Pakistan.
There are no easy answers, but there are answers. Pakistan which has dragged its feet for a number of reasons has just got to get er done.
I don’t think I missed that much. But earlier on in the engagement the view was all yours. I will defer to your judgment there.
The master founder initially tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who were, however, unable to secure the funds needed to hire him.
The next libertarian who argues for laisez faire and tells you that the businessman will work to the better of society through his self-interest needs to be told this story and then shown the door.