Wired has a video depicting a robotic mine clearing device. The little machine fires a line charge across the intended path of advance and — boom — a path is cleared. It’s called APOBS, short for Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System. It’s proponents are at pains to say that “APOBS isn’t meant to kill people. But obviously, it could produce a deadly result.”. Deadly is now bad PR. Wired goes on to explain that the fundamental public problem with the concept of ‘killer robots’ is the ‘killer’ part. So don’t worry: in the video below, not a single animal, unless you count the bugs crawling on the ground or flying in the air, were harmed in its production. It’s as harmless as the CGI in Avatar. And that’s the way modern Western man likes things. Clean and sanitary, untouched by human tears.
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Why so? Perhaps as a result of exposure to movies and videos, society is accustomed to seeing a dramatic arc. Unless it looks like a movie it isn’t real. But what about the physical details? Isn’t for example, an oil spill at the bottom of the ocean real? Sure. But not as real as the images are to us. Let’s see if Maureen Dowd can persuade herself to take the greasy stuff seriously — as greasy stuff. Nope. The problem with the oil leak in the Gulf, she writes, is that it looks bad for the President. “It’s not a good narrative arc … one little hole a mile down on the ocean floor, so deep it seems like hell spewing up its sulfurous smoke, has turned the thrilling saga of ‘The One’ into the gurgling horror of ‘The Abyss.’” After reading the rest of the article it is clear that Dowd actually means it. The actual problem isn’t the oil. Which of us has actually physically seen that oil? But how many have seen Barack Obama starring in a bad movie. Lots of people. So that’s the real problem. Birds don’t vote but people who watch television and read the New York Times do. That’s reality. So what’s in the images?
Besides the roiling water below, the skies opened from above and gusting, lightning-streaked rains drowned the president’s plans to give a Memorial Day speech at the Lincoln cemetery near Chicago. On the evening news, pictures of the president standing under an umbrella shooing people off the soggy field were a sad contrast to the wildly sentimental Joe Biden presiding, hand on heart, over a sunny and moving Memorial Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery.
Pictures, atmosphere, lights, camera, action. From a certain point of view all problems are about bad sets and hammy acting. Dowd was at pains to emphasize further on that the President and his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, made themselves look ridiculous. It’ wasn’t that they lacked competence. Even Peggy Noonan has given up on finding that in the White House. Gibbs and Obama came across as uncool. That’s unforgiveable.
After Gibbs asserted that his boss was “enraged” at BP, CBS News’s Chip Reid skeptically pressed: “Have we really seen rage from the president on this? I think most people would say no.”
“I’ve seen rage from him, Chip,” Gibbs insisted. “I have.”
Reid asked for an exact definition of what constitutes emotion for Obama: “Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?”
Gibbs mentioned the words “clenched jaw” and the president’s admonition to “plug the damn hole.”
How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?
Maybe public life has reached the stage where words, spin and images are no longer required to represent reality because words, spin and images are reality. At least to people who work in the media that may be literally true. Consider the Obama administration’s advice to Israel with respect to an oncoming ‘humanitarian’ flotilla bound for Gaza. Is it about the logistics of keeping resources from Hamas? Is it about seeing to it that there are no rocket parts in the cargo. Hell no. It’s about keeping the optics nice. “What’s most important to the President is that events like the one that transpired a couple nights ago don’t transpire again,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said Wednesday. “So we are talking to our partners and are hopeful that we won’t see a repeat.” If you’re a military organization worried about lead and things flying through the air at supersonic speed it’s a wholly new paradigm, this image thing is. The problem is that Israel, perhaps because it doesn’t have an unlimited number of special forces types, is going to use the same unit to intercept the next flotilla.
Still, the Israel Navy will likely choose the same unit – Flotilla (Shayetet) 13 – to lead a commandeering operation of the ships expected to try to break the sea blockade of Gaza later this week, according to defense officials.
“No other unit has the capabilities that the shayetet has in boarding and commandeering ships in the middle of the ocean,” one defense official said Wednesday. “They are the best unit for the operation.”
They’re nitwits for thinking that operational goals are the purpose of the operation. It’s pictures. Pictures. Of course some cultures don’t care about pictures at all. In contrast to the US mine clearing bot, the Nazis simply marched Soviet prisoners across minefields to clear them. That solved the problem of feeding POWs and clearing the mines at one stroke. The Soviets, not to be outdone, used Soviet citizens to march across Nazi minefields to clear them out. “Russian people were forced under Soviet Power by NKVD bayonets and “blocking detachments” to clear minefields with their bodies, advance in dark clothing over snow to draw German fire, charge machinegun posts unarmed and generally be slaughtered brutally and anonymously in the name of maintaining Soviet Power. All this while well trained and equipped NKVD troops were used to guard the Russian gulags.” During the Iraq-Iran war, Khomeini did Hitler and Stalin one better. He used Iranian children to clear pathways through minefields.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.
At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”
Who needs an APOBS when you’ve got willpower like that? None of this matters because as Maureen Dowd probably knows, facts depicting non-Western ‘brutality’ don’t count at all in stories. Nobody is interested in them. Now talk about a guy handling a Koran without gloves and you have a war crime. That’s what is meant by narratives. Speaking of narratives, the one word which neither Burton nor the White House have used with respect to the “humanitarian flotillas” is that they are a type human shield tactic. Like the Nazis and the Soviets and the Ayatollah, Hamas figures that if you send enough human shields into the Israeli blockade the inevitable collision will clear a path through which all kinds of goodies can eventually flow through to Hamas. That’s as plain as day, as is the actual fact that the “human shield” tactic is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. But you have to establish that to the public, creative the narrative as it were. Since the media knows it won’t sell, why bother to talk about it.
Human shield is a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of civilians in or around combat targets to deter an enemy from attacking those targets. It may also refer to the use of civilians to literally shield combatants during attacks, by forcing the civilians to march in front of the soldiers. This is done in the hope that the other party will be reluctant to attack them. Furthermore, if the other party attacks these targets anyway, the resulting civilian casualties have propaganda value. Using this technique increases the civilian casualty rate and is illegal by any nation that is party to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Perhaps Maureen Dowd is right. From long experience, she may have come to believe that nothing matters except appearances. The storyline, the dek, the masthead, the narrative — these are the atomic bombs of the 21st century. Call a person a ‘peace activist’ and though he might be Charles Manson himself, an aura of sanctity descends upon him. Call a flotilla humanitarian for long enough, even though the humanitarian goods they deliver are themselves refused by the recipients unless imbued with political content, and the flotilla becomes humanitarian. “Hamas officials on Wednesday refused to allow into the Gaza Strip 21 truckloads of humanitarian aid that had been offloaded from the Gaza-bound flotilla ships currently docked at Ashdod Port, until ‘all’ of those detained in Monday’s naval raid were released.” It’s all in the labeling. What’s inside the can is irrelevant. The goods are spoiled anyhow; they’ve been touched by Jewish hands.
Once upon a time “making a difference” meant changing reality. It meant winning actual victories, making actual things, saving actual lives. Today it means changing the narrative, altering perceptions, hiding brutality, or better yet, convincing the audience that brutality happens only when the dramatic cues come on. Dowd ends on this note:
This president has made it clear that he’s not comfortable outside whatever domain he’s defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he’d better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.
Is it a sane thought? Perhaps it is, within the terms of our world. But it is certainly an original one; a rewrite of Macbeth in its last word, though not necessarily a better one.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying everything.”
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Who needs an APOBS when you’ve got willpower like that? None of this matters because as Maureen Dowd probably knows, facts depicting non-Western ‘brutality’ don’t count at all in stories. Nobody is interested in them. Now talk about a guy handling a Koran without gloves and you have a war crime
COL. KURTZ: “We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile…A pile of little arms. And I remember…I…I…I cried…I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized…like I was shot…Like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead…And I thought: My God…the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we.”
I dunno.
First, the fear of the robot killing is not necessarily the killing, but the ROBOT killing, the ROBOTS taking over – or of course any increase in the effectiveness of the US military.
Second, except as an exercise in pathology, one shouldn’t bother with what Maureen Dowd writes.
But OK, take her name off it and consider wretchard’s point, is it all about “looking kewl”? Well, that can’t hurt, but I’m not really all that cynical. WHEN people know the context, they can override the appearance – they can IGNORE the appearance, they can read the appearance backwards, as guilt.
That’s almost the most troubling aspect of the Gaza business, people have to adopt a bad context in order to accept even the surface appearance. It is also (for me!) the most troubling aspect of some guy named Barack Hussein Obama – in the words of Jay Leno, “WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?”
It’s not the surface, it’s the lack of depth.
If that makes any sense.
I’m just fresh off getting selected for a jury. Once again I am quite positively impressed with the characteristics of my fellow citizens – and even the second-rank judge and third-rank lawyers and totally befuddled bailiff (it’s about the most minor civil trial in town, which frankly is about my speed).
When informed and allowed to discuss, good sense seems more widespread than one would ever gather from looking at the likes of Obama, much less Dowd.
You once used the term “fixity of malice” to describe the bottomless hatred which animates Muslims and Islam. (Three Conjectures) I cannot fathom how human heads, with human eyes, and human brains can look upon the cynical Turkish “Freedom Flotilla” and not see what was really going down.
But the arbiters of opinion who decide what information gets through to fashion the narrative (and the medium is the message) all live fantastic lives in miracle cities like NY and Paris. These arbiters can decide to fly into war zones in the morning in their private jets, return in the same evening to construct the narrative, while eating $1600 sushi takeout and and drinking $500 bottles of bubbly. Why wouldn’t the real world look like a storybook to these parasitical self serving millionaires and billionaires?
When the “narrative” becomes more important than reality, the culture that espouses the narrative will die when reality rears its ugly reptilian head to eat those who deny its existence. Its not a matter of “if” its just a matter of “when.”
Reality is a monster more powerful than Godzilla, and like Jason in the Friday the 13th movies, no matter how many times you kill it, it just keeps coming back to life.
Narrative. The narrative is, Governor Jindal wants permission to build sand dikes to protect his wetlands from oil and no one in the USG can make that decision. Meanwhile, the President has shut down virtually all US drilling, making us more dependent on foreign petroleum, while offering government jobs to politicians not to run against his cronies. Our debt increases exponentially while unemployment in the private sector crashes. The Iranians continue to build nuclear weapons, the Norks sink a South Korean ship with no repercussions. Greece is about to fall apart at the seams and tear the EU apart. Israel is being betrayed by its only friend in the world. Chavez tightens the screws on his people and blames the US. And MoDo frets over narrative. The only good news is that the evening is as pretty as I’ve ever seen in the Carson Valley. Apart from that, the world is rapidly going to hell in a handbasket. F
So what better way to change the narrative than to use the word ‘new’ as in ‘new and improved’ Colgate Dental Cream? The NYT describes the Obama’s “new” approach to Gaza.
So why not put a UN Peacekeeping force in Gaza to keep weapons from being smuggled in to bombard Israel. You know, the way things are in Lebanon where Hezbollah has re-armed with bigger and better missiles under the noses of the UN? If the UN could maintain a blockade, Israel would leave them to it. Of course that would be mean actually doing something. But in the modern world, a nice photo op showing the gorgeous Blue Helmets, some white painted APCs and an officer with a “clenched jaw” and it’s all fixed. The pictures, remember, the pictures.
Who’s actually going to go into Gaza and keep Hamas from re-arming without actually doing something? France? Britain? Egypt? That’s too much to ask, isn’t it. Because they might actually need to shoot somebody. Then the optics will be bad. So dollars to donuts, they’ll go for the optics and inaugurate some fancy port called the Mahatma Gandhi Mother Theresa humanitarian pier and then forget about it. And it will become an Iranian port on Gaza.
Then one of these days a real war will break out and real people will die. But nobody will connect the addiction to fantasy with those broken bodies, those smashed buildings, those shattered lives. Because the camera will move on. The moving finger writes … ‘new’.
“Image is everything” is a 4th world concept. When Image meets reality, reality wins. Sort of like a poodle and a Tractor Trailer colliding. Bet on the truck.
Actually, Israel has an out now that Egypt has abandoned the blockade. They can declare a ‘Maritime Exclusion Zone’ and just sink the ships that enter it. No more pictures of “peace activists” assaulting troops. Just live shots of Sharks chowing down on peace activist’s body parts. Which do you suppose will get the higher ratings?
Remember, if it bleeds, it leads.
Morton, there are none so blind as those that refuse to look.
F @ #5:
it’s all part of the plan dude. Obama doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t care how much corruption gets exposed, the one thing we have in common, how many jobs lost or wetlands destroyed.
He hates us all. That’s why he went to that shithole of a town on Memorial Day rather than Arlington. Or maybe Biden is being prepped for a promotion…
W: “Maybe public life has reached the stage where words, spin and images are no longer required to represent reality because words, spin and images are reality… Perhaps Maureen Dowd is right. From long experience, she may have come to believe that nothing matters except appearances… Once upon a time “making a difference” meant changing reality. It meant winning actual victories, making actual things, saving actual lives. Today it means changing the narrative, altering perceptions…”
I am fascinated by the way current events are beginning to run parallel with George Orwell’s vision of a dystopian future. All of this would make for terrific wordplay – fodder for the raconteur – if it weren’t for the fact that I’d like to live the residue of my life in this peaceful and prosperous nation under liberty in the natural creative pursuit of happiness – the same for our children. My fascination yields to disgust as I watch Maureen Dowd and the other Lilliputians tie down Gulliver. Our great nation is infected with the sickness of Newspeak lies and irrationality – and the psychopathology of controlled insanity. Where does it all end if unchecked? You know the answer.
“You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity (Doublethink).” George Orwell – 1984
Lots of fools believe in the narrative over the reality, but there are many millions who don’t fall for this tripe. As the saying goes, there are only three days between civilization and barbarism.
Coincidentally, a few minutes ago I printed out “the survivalist blog. net” article on “How to Care for Wounds When the Medical System Has Collapsed.” I don’t expect to survive if things collapse, but it doesn’t hurt to have some useful information around, along with bottled water, etc.
Really, fools like Dowd and other NYT silly writers will die horribly, and that will be the end of them. Reality always trumps image, as the Nazis found out. I’m glad that the United States is a Jacksonian nation–with people who know how to defend themselves. I hope Governor Jindal will soon DEMAND help from the feds, or else. Maybe he will rise to the occasion.
I can’t say what I think about those who are trying to destroy the United States and Israel–I’ve been chastised several times for being too direct–but all of you know that not all so-called civilized people are against the concept of revenge.
Josh:
First, the fear of the robot killing is not necessarily the killing, but the ROBOT killing, the ROBOTS taking over – or of course any increase in the effectiveness of the US military.
Hmmm. I hope I don’t sound too much like a robot out of Blade Runner, but I think the fear of robots comes from the very word. The Czech word “robot” means servant – or slave. Robots are, by definition, mechanical slaves. So, the horror of being killed by a robot is to be killed by an inferior being, that is, if the machine is a being at all.
A good analogy can be made to the Union policy of arming black men during the Civil War. It was an utter shock for a white racist to be defeated in battle by people he saw as property, not men.
Historically, prowess in war has led to rights at the ballot box. I think female participation in war industries led to women’s suffrage. Likewise, black mobilization during World War II under the Double V campaign led directly to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. So, the military prowess of robots may engender greater respect for machines (or “robots”) that can think for themselves.
Is a “robot” a tool analogous to a hammer? Or is it a being? The very word “robot” creates ambiguity because it basically means “slave”. The idea of a “robot uprising” is essentially no different from that of a slave uprising. I think we need to consider at what point a machine becomes a being, and then at what point a machine becomes a sentient being.
When dogs are used in war, do we fear dogs taking over? When camels are used in war, do we fear camels taking over? Yet, robot uprisings are a common staple of science fiction, which makes me wonder if they are really talking about machines after all…
What is controlled Insanity? Newspeak government lies with corresponding popular Doublethink acceptance. What is Doublethink? “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting both of them… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” George Orwell
What is sanity? Common Sense. What is Common Sense? Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.
For a good airplane-book read, check out Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear.” It’s about Nature versus phony, useless, Narrative-writing types like Obama, Gibbs, Dowd, Hamas-lovers, Hezbollah-lovers, socialists, peace activists, etc. etc.
1. Teresita
Who needs an APOBS when you’ve got willpower like that?
,,,,,,,,,
And I thought: My God…the genius of that. The genius. The
will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete,
crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we.”
Psalm 127:1 (New International Version)
A song of ascents. Of Solomon.
1 Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
The reason we have an existential fear of robots rebelling is captured perfectly in the character of the Nexus 7 in Bladerunner – we fear that which is almost like us but is faster, stronger, smarter, and more ruthless than us. Deep down we all know that our species rose to dominance by being smarter, faster, and more violent than all of our rivals, and I think it’s also obvious that the reason there is only one species of Homo left on this planet is that we vigorously eliminated all competition in that department.
And because of that we know instinctively that we, as a species, could be replaced the same way. That is the fate we fear more than any other.
and a comment on Wretchard’s rewrite of the line from The Scottish Play:
When tales told by an idiot signify “everything”, then everything is truly nothing. I think the bard got it exactly right the first time.
Turkey is a member of NATO.
The NATO contract is that an attack on any member is an attack on all and demands retaliation.
Turkey claims that its ship is sovereign territory and its citizens were murdered.
Turkey says it will send military convoys to protect its sovereignty and citizens in the next flotilla
Israel is not a member of NATO and is now the potential target
Why did they do this? they have smart decision analysts — they used to be good at this stuff– what happened?
I do not understand the keystone cops debacle
Wretchard, the word you are looking for is … women.
Now, women have many virtues. Among them kindness, succor, generosity, and nurturing. But leaving their virtues unchecked, like men, these can degenerate. Into: Fashion, an obsession with appearances, and so on.
Which sex obsesses over fashion? Over celebrities? Over botox and plastic surgery? Over various idiot trends and kaballah water and so on? Which sex makes icons out of the Kardashians (on the covers of every major gossip mag for the past six months)?
Now consider men. With many obvious flaws, including strength morphing into sadism. But among men, position and power is dealt from accomplishment. Had Stalin not won the war, all the appearances would have availed him nothing. He like Mussolini would have met a bad end. As did Hitler.
What you don’t like is nothing more or less than the feminized West operating according to feminine rules. Like a giant “reality” show that is scripted, more or less, that never ends. The way out is simply to be Machiavelli. Not the man I’d consult for family and interpersonal relationships, but among nations, yes.
No one says boo about North Korea sinking the Cheosam because they are nuked up and dangerous. If Israel wants respite, they must sink deep at sea, via submarines, the flotilla, especially if Turkish naval vessels escort them. Taking care to use different torpedoes (thanks North Korea!) to disguise their action and with radio jamming equipment to prevent any SOS from moving out and attracting aid. Hmm … Mysteriously the ships all disappeared. Shrug and look baffled at any suggestion Israel might be behind it. Ponder if Alien abductions or possibly Godzilla might have sunk them. Point to “UFO Magazine” and their coverage of “USOs” and the Bermuda Triangle!
In other words, stop acting like women, and act like men.
Yes of course Dowd and Noonan and other women in the feminized press (and “thrill up his leg” Chris Matthews too) are all about appearances. Like a faux pas of bad fashion, or what have you. Stupid stuff only women care about.
Now consider what men like. WWE. Explosions, blood, soap opera feuds, flying bodies, savage beat-downs from ambush, revenge, glorious un-PC (they had “Eugene” the “Special” Wrestler on for a while) … all in a glorious and savage “competition” to “be the best.” The UFC offers a more unscripted and less fixed version of this. Real fights with real winners and losers. Who is toughest? In sports like this, you find out.
Instead of a fantasy of hunky semi-gay vampires, rich debutantes, celebrity junk reality show contestants, and just recently, that a guy like Joran Van Der Sloot would “turn over a new leaf” because his new girl was “special” (unlike Natalee Holloway). Heck the pages of any local newspaper are filled with some girl figuring she’s “special” and can control her thrilling/dangerous bad-boy.
Because the fantasy is addictive. A “hot” older guy who’s around a century mark, a total killer, who looks like he’s only five years older than the teen girl readership/audience. That stuff is like Bolivian Marching Powder! They can’t get enough out of it. Or maybe you prefer the stuff at the other end — where a woman can be fought over by men at age 55, or 65 even! And hot, hunky men with options on any woman!
The West is in a demographic death spiral because Western women find Western men icky boring and repellent beta drones. Not worthy of having kids by. Unlike say, hunky or dominating celebrities, mysterious “others” be they vampires or the Muslim men Sandra Tsing Loh admires.
Given that, the smartest move is to simply abandon the female fantasy and act with utter ruthlessness, in a way that is smart not stupid. Stalin, Khomeni, and the rest wrecked their nations by killing their kids. Should Iran get a new Persian Empire, it will be as unsustainable as Japan’s, or Germany’s, or Russia’s, because they won’t have the men to run it! They did not live fantasy, but made a fool’s bargain. Typical of thieves not statesmen.
I will observe the following. One: West Africa is rich in resources, but lacking a unified people, mostly squabbling tribes of men and women who are ignorant, poor, and with low IQs. Two: modern medicine and disease fighting methods allow those (Chinese, Europeans) without natural resistant to native diseases to live there without dying by the bushel as in the past. Three: in a world chronically short of valuable commodities, such as oil, gold, silver, diamonds, and cocoa, coffee, and other agricultural commodities, easily grown, someone will indeed mine or extract the resources from the ground and grow the agricultural commodities. Four: machines means that no native labor need be required, and indeed would be counter-productive (it would be a heavy task to find any natives both educated enough and smart enough to handle million dollar plus sophisticated and dangerous equipment). Five: economic stagnation at home and lack of access to economic success finds succor in weak, no-allies West Africa with lots of resources for the taking if only the natives can be shoved aside into “reservations” so those with modern industrial economies can exploit them — not the least of which is giving millions of young men without any hope of advancement a means to buy a decent life for themselves.
Yes this is colonialism. In slow-motion, by degrees, it is already happening in Africa by the Chinese.
Do you think that Russia, America, Iran, Pakistan, or India will fight and die for Togolese and Beninians right to self-determination and freedom?
The same, I might add, can be said about South Africa, about most of South America, save perhaps Brazil and Chile. Asia has enough smart people who believe in their nations to make such an adventure the equivalent of clearing mines with the nations children. You might do it, but you sacrifice the generation next to you, producing an empty land. In say, Italy, this was done by Italian women finding their men too beta and effeminate to be worthy of being pregnant. Women who find their men attractive enough will find a way to have kids, particularly in post-War affluence. Muslims in Europe have no problem, nor Mexicans in the US.
This isn’t Orwell. Airstrip One, regardless of its nightmare nature, had militaries that actually fought people. It was male. Not female. It suffered no imminent danger of defeat and occupation. The most noxious thing about female power, unfettered or unmodified, is that it reliably produces defeat and abject surrender to a conquering foe. 1984 was many things, but notably absent was the Kardashians, female fascination with “others,” deeply feminized men, and the other attributes of a female-centric West.
As usual, the West’s greatest strength (the position of its women, neither slaves nor chattel nor ignorant bearers of polygamist hordes) has been its weakness. Just as Khomeni and Stalin’s own cheap gambles to fix their strategic stupidity doomed their nations.
Napoleon cleared a crowd with “a whiff of grapeshot” and ended the Revolution. The Left likes to bleat about “disproportionate” force but the only formula they have says that use by the Other is legitimate and excusable at any level while resistance at any level is illegitimate and inexcusable. The Left pretends it regulates methods, because they are incapable of making value judgments about goals. So they ban an arbitrary criteria like “assault rifles” which are really just cosmetic distinctions because they cannot honestly say that some people are bad and should not have access to weapons while others are good and can be trusted. The reductio ad absurdum is they only attempt to control the harmless who may follow the law and they give up on even attempting to curtail the actions of those who the law should reasonably constrain. What is legitimate or not is not dependent on the methods used but on the ends sought. Only in relation to the end can proportionality be considered. To preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States violence against evil men with armies hiding behind children may be justifiable. To advance the cause of sadistic supremacists determined to drag the world into the 7th century no act is legitimate. Any act done to harm the fragile community of Liberty is illegitimate and many acts done to frustrate those seeking to do those illegitimate acts are acceptable.
That does not mean that anything goes. Goldwater restating Cicero probably overstated the case. It made for fine oratory to say “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” but the job of a Statesman, or Officer in combat, is to determine what, given the goals, is sufficient and to draw the line between necessity and extremism. It means that something goes and the forces of freedom must decide what is needed to achieve their goal.
At Harfleur Henry V according to the Bard threatened,
Once he had the governor’s surrender Henry commanded “show mercy to them all.” Napoleon was no champion of Liberty, but he probably was justified in dispersing the crowd and preventing further bloodshed at that time.
“What is sanity? Common Sense. What is Common Sense? Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.”
Let me guess? You’re the new friggin’ grasshopper?
WOW, very cool!
Hi, I’m Penny. Nice to meet you.
“A good analogy can be made to the Union policy of arming black men during the Civil War. It was an utter shock for a white racist to be defeated in battle by people he saw as property, not men.”
Pure propaganda. Read this;
http://cwmemory.com/2008/07/20/peter-carmichael-on-black-confederates-and-confederate-slaves/
Two facts about the War of Secession.
A) it wasn’t about slavery, but about a State’s right to secede from the Union. Slavery was finished anyway. Machines were going to replace slaves within a decade or so. The War might have sped up that process, although an argument can be made that by destroying 75% of the South’s capital (Slaves) it took longer to replace the slaves with machines because of the lack of local capital.
As a matter of fact some Southerners offered to sell their slaves to the people that wanted to free them to raise capital for machinery.
B). The North was as bigoted as the South. Maybe more so. Google “New York Draft Riots” Or the “Fort Detroit massacre”.
No one knows for sure, but it is not only possible but likely that the South had more blacks under arms then the North. If you include ‘camp followers’ there is no doubt at all. Those blacks were NOT fighting to remain slaves. They were fighting for their home and families.
The point I’m trying to make is that Propaganda is nothing new. Victors write history whih is why your High School textbooks had so much propaganda about the war of secession. Starting with the name. It wasn’t a civil war, which is defined as a war which is fought over political control of a nation. The Confederate States just wanted to be a seperate nation. They were not fighting for political control of the North. So it was no civil war.
The rest of your textbook was pretty much garbage also. So the spin lasted a while. It won’t last much longer, since we are on the verge of a true civil war.
Those that live through a real civil war will realize that what happened in the 1860′s wasn’t.
Maybe it is our fault.
In religion you have the catechism, the ceremony, to teach and remind. It is the left’s error that no such things are needed, that such things necessarily hold us back. It is the right’s error to forget to teach and explain. I see this in the US, the right lets the left teach the children. Perhaps it’s also the problem with Israel, they need to remind people, night and day, of the foul nature of their enemies.
The Arabs and Islamics know this. They live a fantasy world, and their highest art form is insult. But those are poor tools for setting a narrative or context. We must do better.
What is this thing reality?
The young man smiled and said
To me it’s what is like as not
To get me killed real dead
Ah no, said yet another man
What’s false and what is real
Is that which fits the narrative
Of how I ought to feel
You both are wrong, the woman said
For nothing’s really real
And truth is false and false is true
As narratives congeal
An older man, a passerby
Cried out then, quite aloud
Reality is opposite
What’s said by Maureen Dowd
Wretchard asks: So what’s in the images?
Interesting that the Anchoress has a new post up about various ways the oil spill might have been dealt with– and concludes with an update featuring a quote from a reader who used to live in Louisiana:
I lived in Louisiana for about 15 years off and on. Including about 7 years working as a CPA in the oil patch and as the controller for a commercial diving company. I loved the place. And, I know how difficult it will be to get oil out of the marshes and swamps (whats the diff? Marshes don’t have trees.) once it gets in there.
I couldn’t understand why they didn’t burn it. It’s been 23 years since I was working down there; but, that was a common way to deal with it back then. Louisiana sweet floats really well and doesn’t have to be supplemented to burn, so why not? Well, the first problem was not enough burn boom and then I understand the EPA nixed it.
Somebody needs to have a sharp case of reality here.
[Anchoress's comment] I’m guessing that a spill of this size, and the visuals of black smoke pouring into the sky made the burn-off idea unpalatable both politically and environmentally.
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/06/02/cant-they-vacuum-up-that-oil/#comments
Again, the observation that “the visuals” all too often get in the way of “the physical details,” as Wretchard puts it.
Are you suggesting the Maldems actually believe that is how President Reagan got elected? All protest to the contrary, president Obama is the dems RR, in their eyes. Difference being of course that “the gipper” had some real life experience before becoming Governor. Held a real job too.
So would calling “civilians” on the “flotilla” “Journalists” be double double speak.
The medium is the madness, so I guess McLuhan got it wrong?
Maybe the Med will get infected with rogue North Korean torpedoes. NK torpedoes are like SUVs — they got a will of their own. And like Toyotas, they got very poor impulse control. No telling what they’ll do. Perhaps they are migrating through the Indian Ocean now, and following supertankers through the Suez.
Whiskey:
Which sex obsesses over fashion? Over celebrities? Over botox and plastic surgery?
I’m thinking both. Who’s on the cover of women’s magazines like Cosmo? Beautiful botoxed and inflated plastic women. Who’s on the cover of men’s magazines like Maxim? Beautiful botoxed and inflated plastic women.
No one says boo about North Korea sinking the Cheosam because they are nuked up and dangerous.
It was the Norks said boo with that sinking, and the Japanese finally abandoned their sixty-five year campaign to drive the Marines off Okinawa. The PM resigned over that.
If Israel wants respite, they must sink deep at sea, via submarines, the flotilla, especially if Turkish naval vessels escort them. Taking care to use different torpedoes (thanks North Korea!) to disguise their action and with radio jamming equipment to prevent any SOS from moving out and attracting aid.
This is the age of satellite uplink. Can’t jam it, it’s too directional. When that ship goes down to Davey Jones’ locker, it will be live on CNN.
The West is in a demographic death spiral because Western women find Western men icky boring and repellent beta drones.
Why is that? …consider what men like. WWE. Explosions, blood, soap opera feuds, flying bodies, savage beat-downs from ambush, revenge…
Now I like the average “guy movie” just like the next dyke. Iron Man II was okay. But jeez Louise, how about some balance between the mushy stuff and the action? People don’t talk like that. Get a woman to help you write it like George Lucas did in The Empire Strikes Back. Otherwise you end up with the sappy crap in Attack of the Clones.
ANAKIN: “I don’t like sand. Its rough and coarse and it gets everywhere. Not like you. Your skin is soft and smooth.”
Allow iperceptions.com: Imagine*.
…-
“The Pleasures of Imagination
How do Americans spend their leisure time? The answer might surprise you.”
“Does this suggest that people believe, at some level, that the events are real? Do we sometimes think that fictional characters actually exist and fictional events actually occur? Of course, people get fooled, as when parents tell their children about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, or when an adult mistakes a story for a documentary, or vice versa. But the idea here is more interesting than that—it is that even once we consciously know something is fictional, there is a part of us that believes it’s real.
There is something to this: It can be devilishly hard to pull apart fiction from reality.”
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasures-of-Imagination/65678
(*H/T JL)
It is not about the optics, it is about the projectionist behind the reel. The person who selected the image.
Obama projects the void; empty eyes – empty, empty eyes. Nothing to live or die for. Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters. Bismillah.
But then we all see Obama’s emptyness. Nothing new in this insight. So how to explain the constant Dear Leader images on the screen?
So the projectionist can project his image as the one who has the ear of God. Knows what is right for you, but still humble. Has selected the right film for you, compensating for your puny intelligence, of course.
It is not just Islam that knows what is right for you. NYT does too. Islamics are not the only people who are submissive to priests. NYT readers are too.
ADE
How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?
Duh! Bill Ayers is busy with the ‘humanitarian’ flotilla!
25. hdgreene, I couldn’t agree more! When anybody asks the IDF if they did the act they should just shrug and, with a New Jersey accent, say; “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no friggin torpeda. Ya got a PROBLEM wid’ dat?”
Hit them at night and sink them all, send in a “humanitarian” rescue mission in the morning (it’s tough to swim with body armour on).
29. Aristide; “Duh! Bill Ayers is busy with the ‘humanitarian’ flotilla!”
OOOH, can we Hanoi Jane and him on the same boat in Gaza Flotilla II? (better sink that one far out to sea, I don’t know about Ayers but Jane can swim)
Oops, now I am the one living in Fantasyland!
Around Memorial Day of each year I read the Iliad. Although their bones have long been dust we still speak the names of Achilles, Hector and Ajax because they mean courage, honor, plain speaking and honesty. Those men were not mired in confusion about friend or foe. Neither did they hesitate to rebuke their king when he proffered bad council. They lamented when the gods acted against them but doubled their effort to overcome it.
Helen Thomas frames a lie as a question to aid our enemies, and the President’s man accepts it without comment. After, they both go home to a pleasant dinner.
So I have to ask myself, exactly how is it that human society has progressed in those 3,000 years?
It won’t be torpedoes. Israel only has about 5 subs and IIRC, 2 are in dock being upgraded to carry nuclear cruise missiles. Plus it would take them some time to get to the Med. No, if Israel decides to sink any ships, it will be by air strike. That means bombs, since there are no torpedoes that can be dropped from the air without having the aircraft slow down to the point where it becomes a suicide mission. The IAF doesn’t do suicide missions. PGM’s from 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) is what they will do. And they won’t hide it. Israel quit caring about the ‘court of public opinion’ back in ’48. When fighting for survival, the opinion of those trying to destroy you doesn’t matter.
If they really want to make a statement, they should nuke the flotilla. They won’t, but they should. Remind ‘the court of public opinion’ just what is at stake and what power looks like. How many nukes does the ‘court of public opinion’ have? How many Brigades?
Penny / 19,
Common Sense is reason – acceptance of self-evident truth – Common Sense is sanity. Common Sense is the opposite of Doublethink – rejection of irrationality – rejection of Newspeak lies – rejection of controlled insanity.
In Oceania, a Socialist Paradise of Doublethink, “The heresy of heresies was common sense.” George Orwell – 1984
Rosinante: If they really want to make a statement, they should nuke the flotilla . . . How many nukes does the ‘court of public opinion’ have?
Very dumb. What ever happened to God’s plan “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth” ? I realize to a man with a large hammer every problem looks like a nail, but you don’t use a daisy cutter when a 500 lb smart bomb will suffice. You don’t use a demolition ball to swat a fly on a window. Israel might have a hundred nukes, but there are at least 101 flotillas, and after the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since Nagasaki, against well-meaning people who are trying to get calories to the Gaza gulag, even the United States will become Israel’s bitter enemy, at the very least looking the other way when Russia and China and Pakistan level the country in the interest of self-preservation, the same way we’d zap North Korea after they hit Seoul.
These APOB’s have possibilities as other resources as well. Yes they can be used to inflict damage but that’s part of what war is though some laggards forget that. War is not mean to be fair.
@Alexis/11: Makes me wonder if we’ll have to pay reparations for having enslaved generations of toasters.
Gregg,
Having just picked up my dry-cleaning I shudder to think what I must owe my washing machine!
Of course the narrative matters. The developed nations are democracies, and thus power and wealth flows to whomever gets the most votes. And the people vote based on what they know. And since “reality” is over in the Med or Central Asia, it never invades and supersedes the news media. Thus the narrative drives votes, driving power and wealth.
Is this surprising? In the age of Kings the man with the King’s ear had the most power. In the age of democracy the man with the people’s ear has the most power. And since people remember stories better than they remember facts, stories control the ballot box.
Look on the bright side. The fantasies afflict most of the elites in the modern world.
Abbas’s crew seem to imagine that the flow of loot to their little kingdom will be never ending. Interestingly, new British Prime Minister Camerama thinks the same thing. Presiding over a bankrupt country which has to borrow money to pay the interest on its unsupportable national debt, he has “ring-fenced” international “aid”, as the loot is called, and guaranteed that les bons temps (for foreign dictators, at least) will continue to roullez.
As we hit Peak Government and borrowed money runs out, it is an easy guess that subventions to the UN and donations to terrorists will rank lower than – say – continuing welfare payments to Camerama’s own voters.
There is an astonishing parallel in the thought-processes of Big Government elites in the West and despots in the Middle East. Both seem to have a complete lack of recognition that their actions will eventually have consequences. Western liberals drive industries right out of their countries with excessive regulation, and then are surprised at inadequate tax revenues, high unemployment, big trade deficits. Middle Eastern despots pile up arms, missiles and threats, and can’t see that the object of their threats may not go quietly into the night.
39. Brock, well put.
It also explains why the “story” must be shaped and molded on a day-to-day basis in an attempt to pull in the non-compliant flow of reality. It also goes a long way to explain the retreat into fantasy and denial, those facts that are to far from the story line must simply be ignored (or, better yet, negated by claiming “racism” “hater” or -dare I say- “Nazi”).
Just like a soap-opera dispensing it’s emotion-charged nonsense every day the MSM have to keep the story-line chugging along from day to day to keep the thralls from looking away for even an instant. If they did, the spell would be broken and the scales would fall from their eyes.
Strolling through the brush in rattlesnake country at dusk, one sees the dark shape on the ground almost underfoot and immediately knows it is only a stick –but meanwhile one’s body has already jumped backwards hard enough to pull a muscle and has already flushed an ear-ringing flood of adrenaline thru the system. The rattlesnake wasn’t real, but the image was. The fake image being sent into your brain isn’t “real” real but you still need to jump and pump adrenaline –to protect you from whatever sent you the fake image –because it isn’t really a fake image. Regardless of the truth or untruth of the story the image portrays, the image itself is real. That your eye connects to your ‘old’ brain, your reptilian limbic brain buried deep inside your whatchamacallit, is to bypass your ‘discriminating’ intellect and throw you as an animal back into a universe of inchoate threat. and tho you may realize all this as it happens, when you see a picture of some horrible thing happening on a movie screen or in a novel or via a produced ‘news’ product –you need to fear the forces that put that image there for you to see.
Terisita “against well-meaning people who are trying to get calories to the Gaza gulag”.
Incredible. These same poor people that danced and handed out candies a few years ago when the WTC was hit? Your pity is misplaced, your brilliant analysis is failing to ID enemies. Enemies who would stone you to death as a lazy afternoons entertainment for the same “lifestyle” you are so proud to crow about here.
They, and their enablers, supporters and fanbase can all strap on a tin bill and go pick sh*t with the chickens.
I would guess the Big Zero would out-law its use until a group of Judge Advocate Generals have filed briefs with him. The end result will be Analysis Paralysis.
It is obviously it is too dangerous to use in a war.
/
When Gaza was not restricted, and even had Israelis living there, they voted for a homicidal government.
The Israelis moved out, and Gazans launched missiles almost pointlessly but nonetheless against Israel.
Like North Korea, even moreso than North Korea, they use every calorie to kill their neighbors. They are a pathology and a blot on mankind. You can hope for a cure, but that is your western culture speaking. If there are any innocents among them, I’m afraid it will be up to Allah to sort them out.
“Perhaps Maureen Dowd is right. From long experience, she may have come to believe that nothing matters except appearances. The storyline, the dek, the masthead, the narrative —”
Yea, well there is narrative and then there is narrative with full color pictures.
Both of the below examples should be read and remembered and talked about. But actually, guess…which one will be?
“Drug cartels ‘gaining ground’ in drug war”
“Home of a Mexican Drug Lord being Raided.”
Now consider this… Most people who have seen at the most a few thousand dollars in cash all at one time, just won’t be able to put their minds around millions of dollars of American cash in the hands of Mexicans or other South American Drug Lords.
It is beyond their comprehension, but the pictures will impress them, get their greed and jealousy going and gain them time at the water cooler, speculating how they would spend all of that money.
Forgetting how it was all gained. Or maybe imagining how they would handle distribution of same if it were made legal as many would want and many would say is the only way to win the drug war.
The other story which is actually the most important of the two, will be almost forgotten (or not even read) by most. Why? NO pictures, NO video.
What the hell does this mean? Does it mean that we have generations of Americans that can’t relate or identify or even click on something that has no viscerally satisfying masturbation – no video, no graphic pictures?
I suggest that we pound into our children and grand children that there will be strict control on what they see anywhere…be it on the net, on the TV or most elsewhere.
I became numb (for lack of a better word) from spending months seeing people killed, dismembered, splattered into small pieces you couldn’t identify or gather up to send home. I became numb from seeing (and sometimes being a part of) bribery, cohersion and wholesale lies.
I became numb from taking the lives of people trying to kill me and some that just got in the way.
But the strange? thing now is that I can’t hardly stand to see graphic videos or pictures. Fancy that.
I have tried to protect my grand children from these things until I (and they) thought themselve old enough to not only just see or hear but to understand not only the context but the ramifications.
I may be getting way off base of what W was trying to get across in this post, but it is a distinction and direction that our parents and grand parents need to be reminded of. We could censor the information, graphics and such but that would be wrong. What we can do is control what our children see and hear.
It is up to us as adult caregivers to make sure our children are ready for the terrible things that are waiting for them and a part of life and that when they do see or hear them they have our hand in theirs and our knowledge and wisdom to absorb and understand the terrible facts of life.
Our American Educational System for decades has directed and brainwashed our children because we neglected to raise and educate and influence their lives as we should have.
We must correct those terrible mistakes.
Papa Ray
identifying a false narrative is like dodging a bullet –great, but the shooter is still out there –probably in full view, sitting in a lawn chair, firing away with a big grin on his face, by experience feeling impervious to any counter fire.
The line charge is nothing new. The CIA supplied mortar-launched line charges to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan so they could clear Soviet-laid minefields.
Yesterday I saw a Washington Examiner story that claimed William Ayers and Bernadette Dorn were involved in organizing the “peace” flotilla. Have not seen any follow up but would be troublesome for Obama if true.
The movie Big red One had a part called “the bangalore relay” the question asked was, “who in the hell thought this abortion operation up?”
The answer?
Someone not actually in the relay.
Buddy 42, that is exactly why I burn the sticks I find in my yard in our fire pit. That and it helps to keep the images of scratching and mosquitoes to a minimum.
A gift for the Texans here.
New Texas Motorcycle Seat
h/t Theo Spark
Appearances, like will power are futile in the face of the Laws of Physics. I’ve noticed that most proponents of both tend to be weak in the areas of physics.
Remember the jumpers on 9-11? I’m sure they were all willing a soft landing. None of them got it.
In the end the Arabs manipulation of the media won’t get them a ship load of rockets and ManPADS into Gaza. That will require a military strength they don’t possess and cannot possess. If they can get a patsy to throw some military power behind their efforts, in theory that would work.
The problem there is that 60+ years of effort by Israel has made them the most technological advanced military on this planet. Most of the USA’s arsenal of high tech weapons were developed with Israel guidance. Israeli brains, American money.
So any Arab patsy from the EU, NATO, or Russia will find out that their military isn’t what they think it is. The ONLY Naval force that could prevent Israel from stopping any more blockade runners would be the US Navies 6th fleet. And I don’t see that happening. The Usurper is in enough trouble now without starting a war against Israel. Congress isn’t going to authorize that and without Congressional authorization, the US Military can legally tell him No and make it stick. That could have been done during the Kosovo thingie, but wasn’t. It was discussed in certain circles. Nobody will ever know if it was part of a quid-pro-quo for don’t ask don’t tell. Well the DADT has been broken. The bulk of the military is very much against being used as a dating source for a bunch of queers. There will be repercussions.
Appearances are subordinate to will, will is subordinate to physics.
Naval gunfire is probably the easiest way to sink the ships. They’re not armed, so no need for a standoff weapon, the Sa’ar 5s have 76mm main guns that would do just fine for holing a merchant ship at or below the waterline. Failing that, there are always the Gabriel-II or Harpoon missiles. Air-delivered munitions are an extra expense, and the ships are already at sea. But let’s be honest, it’s doubtful the Israelis are going to sink anything. Sayaret 13 will be put on the boats (again) and the boats will be offloaded in Ashdod (again), the only question is how the marine commandos get on the boats. The “peace activists” have assured themselves that the days of being paintballed are over.
And in terms of choosing narrative over reality, our host is dead-on. I suppose it’s the nemesis of our civilizational hubris. People are divorced enough from reality that they have the option and resources to choose narrative over reality. This is not a new condition to humankind (e.g., “Let them eat cake”, a well-intentioned but ultimately fatal choice of narrative over reality), what may be new is the number of people that are in that class (no longer the dynastic nobility) and the number of people who aspire to that class and in solidarity, choose narrative over reality despite the fact that they lack the resources to make it so. Unlike the peasantry of old, all of those aspirational narrative-worshipers get to vote, and so here we are. I have to hope that this is a transient mindset for many of them, that the sudden imposition of reality will reawaken some dormant inner fortitude that will see them through an extended spell of reality such as transportation failures that result in “Big Box” stores being emptied and the reality that 96% of Americans are not in the agricultural field and live hundreds of miles from where most of their sustenance arises. Hopeful, but not optimistic.
With regard to the GOM spill and the frustration of Obama’s many and ludicrous diplomatic outreaches, I am reminded of the legless, armless John Cleese in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, insisting, “BUT I’M THE BLACK KNIGHT!”
The rest of us, who measure actions rather than words, are forced to respond with King Arthur’s line, “You’re a looney.”
Re # 20. Rosinante
“Those that live through a real civil war will realize that what happened in the 1860’s wasn’t.” Correct. I just hope this will not happen.
Brock / 39 “The developed nations are democracies, and thus power and wealth flows to whomever gets the most votes. And the people vote based on what they know.”
Karl Marx believed that Democracies could be subverted by his version class struggle into Communism. Once the Proletariat class (labor challenged, tax-eating non-disabled poor) was able to vote as a block of various “aggrieved” minorities; they could (with the aid of their labor-challenged, tax-eating Marxist leadership class) vote themselves the property of the laboring, tax-paying middle class. Now you have an Animal Farm with the Pigs on top and half the animals laboring to support the Pigs and the Proletarian half of the remaining animals. We are already in this state of Marxist Class Struggle; the only question remaining is whether we destroy American Marxism before it completely destroys the middle class and evolves (“scientifically” according to Marx) into full-throated collectivist Communism.
“The proletariat (non-disabled poor) will use its political supremacy (via the Marxist ruling class) to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie (laboring middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (un-Declarational/un-Constitutional Federal Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property (excessive taxation). You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the (non) working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
In 1852 Karl Marx understood that the United States was not ready for Marxist Class Struggle. That was then – this is now.
“Now, in the United States bourgeois society is still far too immature for the class struggle to be made perceptible and comprehensible…” Karl Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05.htm
The International Muslim Brotherhood had a heavy hand in orchestrating the flotilla.
As my colleague Jonathan Schanzer wrote earlier this week, the flotilla was organized in large part by a radical Turkish Islamist organization named IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi). The IHH, in turn, is part of a Saudi-based umbrella group called the Union of Good, which was created by Hamas. The U.S. Treasury Department designated the Union of Good a terrorist organization in 2008. Of course, Hamas itself was designated a terrorist organization many years ago.
The Union of Good’s leaders include Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a top Muslim Brotherhood cleric, and Sheikh Abd al Majid al Zindani, who heads Yemen’s Islah party. Zindani and the Islah party have deep Brotherhood roots.
In other words, the IHH is an offshoot of the Union of Good, which is in turn an offshoot of the Brotherhood — as is Hamas. It is a matter of basic logic, then, that if the IHH was one of the prime movers behind the flotilla then that means the Brotherhood itself was.
It is as simple as that. But there is much more.
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America
The real threat to the United States is not terrorism. The real threat is Islamism, whose sophisticated forces have collaborated with the American Left not only to undermine U.S. national security but also to shred the fabric of American constitutional democracy—freedom and individual liberty. In The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America, bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy offers a harrowing account of how the global Islamist movement’s jihad involves far more than terrorist attacks, and how it has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep.
For years, McCarthy warned of America’s blindness to the Islamist threat, but in The Grand Jihad McCarthy exposes a new, more insidious peril: the government’s active appeasement of the Islamist ideology. With the help of witting and unwitting accomplices in and out of government, Islamism doesn’t merely fuel terrorism but spawns America-hating Islamic enclaves in our very midst, gradually foisting Islam’s repressive law, sharia, on American life. The revolutionary doctrine has made common cause with an ascendant Left that also seeks radical transformation of our constitutional order. The prognosis for liberty could not be more dire.
Storm Rider:
Interesting side note:
Marx often quoted Charles Dickens, but Dickens never quoted Marx. Dickens knew of Marx, as they were contemporaries. Dickens was a champion of the emerging middle class and its sensibilities. While he was as much into reform as Marx, he felt that the best path to reform was to have a large, civilized, and moderating middle of solid, sober citizens.
Obama and his cronies despise “middleclassness.”
So the Ayers/Dohrn ‘far left’ and the Muslim Brotherhood ‘far right’ have launched upon the waters together, to create for the theocratic atomic death cult, its own little port on the Gaza?
Once that’s done, shirley they’ll part ways, since all of their well-advertised, unshakeable, fundamental beliefs are in such compleat, utter, profound, opposition to one another.
Right?
The Narrative only counts as long as reality allows for the denial. Thus Dowd and Nolan’s awakening perception that the Emperor has no clothes.
#1,
“And then I realized they were stronger than we.”
More ruthless yes, fortunately for us, stupider too. One armed armies labor at a distinct disadvantage. Destroying their own logistical resources is a fundamental characteristic of the ruthless narcissist.
#16,
Under International law, Israel’s blockade is legal. If Turkey tries to run it, Israel has the right to stop the Turks. As for NATO, we are talking about the EU, remember?
#20,
Please explain how the south, without an industrial base, would use cotton gins to replace all the ways that slaves were used? It’s 1860 not 1960…
#35,
“Israel might have a hundred nukes, but there are at least 101 flotillas, and after the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since Nagasaki, against well-meaning people who are trying to get calories to the Gaza gulag, even the United States will become Israel’s bitter enemy, at the very least looking the other way when Russia and China and Pakistan level the country “
It’s my understanding that best estimates are between 200-400.
That’s the narrative’s meme but just for clarity’s sake, you were joking about the ‘well-meaning’ people, right?
Russia and China aren’t going to nuke Israel, no matter the provocation. Pakistan might give a nuke to Hamas in retaliation but that would be risky.
#39,
The people’s ear is increasingly tuned to the internet and that is a medium which favors a compelling argument that can be squared with the facts and common sense.
#40,
“Western liberals drive industries right out of their countries with excessive regulation, and then are surprised at inadequate tax revenues, high unemployment, big trade deficits”
Which they then blame on the ‘rich’ and the evil corporations and ultimately on capitalism, constitutional republicanism and finally individual liberty. In other words, the system.
When they run out of other people’s money, they’ll call for global pursuit of the rich (already happening) and when all the money’s gone, they’ll circle back to the rich who must have somehow secreted away their ill gotten gains. That’s when they’ll crank up the torture chambers and break out the guillotines…
#46,
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. ” Abraham Lincoln
#53,
Your faith in Congress is supported by? The recent anti-Israel NPT conference resolution effectively denying Israel’s right to defend itself was signed by ALL 189 member states, including the US. If Israel gives Obama sufficient political cover, he’ll sign on to a world-wide embargo and blockade of Israel. It’s my understanding that a President, acting as CIC need not consult Congress in instituting a blockade.
#54,
“You’re a looney [Obama].”
“If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.” Abraham Lincoln
#57,
Andy McCarthy may be an American prophet but if not a prophet, he’s certainly a modern version of Paul Revere.
Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World
#59,
Once done, do you think either side will have a problem turning on the other? Ala Hitler and Stalin…
Might not the left calculate that Islam is an easier target than a capitalist American constitutional republic that supports individual liberty?
Does anyone imagine that the hard left, not the liberal useful idiots mind you, would lack the requisite ruthlessness to deal with Islam? Especially as that Left would have ideological ties to both Russia and China…
Or that Islamic radicals, out of cultural ignorance, would have a tendency to underestimate the ruthlessness of the ‘godless atheists’ of the left?
What is all this about a “botched raid?”
Whenever you establish something less than a total blockade, you identify a form of contraband. You openly state you will not allow ships carrying that contraband through the blockade. You further state that all ships attempting to pass through the blockade wil be stopped and searched for that contraband.
This wasn’t a raid. It was a routine boarding. Five other ships had been search that same day. This wasn’t a raid, it was a search.
The “botched” part, if there was a botched part, was the boarding party did not show a particularly overwhelming collection of hardware and a willingness to use it at the outset.
Prior to 2003, US forces (and others) enforced the UN blockade of oil against Iraq in the Shat Al Arab.
Just a thought…
The 24 hours news-cycle filled a need then filled the public psyche with “noise”.
Eventually the noise became a standing waving of new false artifacts.
Enough inertia could be pushed into the membrane of the future that false artifacts could be sustained.
Globalism pushed the membrane to its breaking point. Credibility collapsed, markets followed.
Like filling a balloon with a small hole in it the false artifact oriented machine keeps upping the tempo like a heroine addict chasing the perfect high.
The truth looks for causes to express itself. Enter the blogosphere, tea party, talk radio.
The outcome is uncertain.
uh, will that give another interpretation of the flotilla event ?
“It might be true, but it’s still kinda tasteless, no? http://is.gd/cBzaR We Con The World Video”
Darren @ 54: You’re probably right (even if a 76mm gun is a standoff weapon, compared to boarding!) on what Israel will do, but it’s a darned shame. They should just stand back, say “it’s a blockade!”, and shoot anything that refuses to heed. KISS.
“Those that live through a real civil war will realize that what happened in the 1860’s wasn’t.”
True in the main theatres of the war, which is why “War of Secession” (which you used) or “War between the States” is more accurate.
However, there were places where true Civil War *did* break out – Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, to name some. Not as well known or publicized, but the war in these areas was family vs. family, neighbor vs. neighbor. With very little large scale military action, it’s estimated that 1/3 of the male population of Missouri died violently between 1861 – 1865. The vast majority of this was barely up to the level of guerrilla action; it was one group of families getting together and riding out to murder the families they never really liked, and the relatives of those families coming back and taking their revenge next. Woman and children were slaughtered almost as often as the menfolk. Kentucky was just as bad – there’s a reason it was called “A Dark and Bloody Ground.” Kansas had the jayhawkers who would hang or shoot anyone they suspected of being disloyal(which meant anyone that they had a grudge against) and Arkansas had the same family vs family warfare that Missouri did.
Quantrill’s raiders, for all their notoriety, were probably one of the more restrained groups operating in that area. Well, until Lawrence. But even then, they had cause.
Point being, we *have* had true civil war on our soil before, the real thing – and it was such a hideous undertaking that even today it is only whispered about. Better to pretend that all of that war was organized and disciplined rather than admit how easily the true darkness comes to the surface of our souls.
wws/67; –and it went on awhile. Sgt. York, the doughboy hero of WWI, lost his father-in-law to a bullet fired in a Civil War fight, still going on in the hills. Low-intensity, not really much confrontation, but two clans which accepted not the slightest sign from eaach other, not a wrong look, nothing.
The famous Hatfield/McCoy feud was another of such (to quote from that wiki): The majority of the Hatfields living in Mingo County (in what would eventually become West Virginia), fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The majority of the McCoys living in Pike County, Kentucky fought for the Union army. The first real violence in the feud was the murder of a returning Union soldier, Asa Harmon McCoy. Harmon was killed by a group of ex-Confederates Homeguard called the “Logan Wildcats.” “Devil Anse” Hatfield was a suspect at first, but was later confirmed to have been at home, sick, at the time of the murder. However, it was widely believed that his uncle Jim Vance, a member of the Wildcats, committed the murder.
(ellipse, skipped much text relating single and double homicides a year or a few years apart)
The escalation reached its peak during the 1888 New Years Night Massacre. Several of the Hatfield gang surrounded the McCoy cabin and opened fire on the sleeping family. The cabin was set on fire in an effort to drive Randal McCoy into the open. He escaped by making a break but two of his children were murdered and his wife was beaten and left for dead. The remaining McCoy family moved to Pikeville to escape the West Virginia raiding parties.
Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families, becoming headline news around the country, and compelling the governors of both Kentucky and West Virginia to call up their state militias to restore order[citation needed] The Governor of West Virginia once even threatened to have his militia invade Kentucky.
(ellipse)
The trial of Johnse Hatfield was the last of the feud trials. It took place in 1901.
(ellipse)
On June 14, 2003, on the initiative of Reo Hatfield, an actual peace treaty was drawn up and signed in Pikeville by representatives of the two families, even though the feud had ended over a century before. The idea was symbolic: to show that Americans could bury their differences and unite in times of crisis, most notably following the September 11 attacks.
***
Missouri during the American Civil War was, of course, also where the murderous career of one Jesse James got off to its start.
That said, if we do go down that road again, at least if it’s a red vs. blue affair I strongly suspect it will go beyond even family vs. family or neighbor vs. neighbor – it will also rip apart a good many extended families and quite a few immediate ones. The unpleasantness of 1861-65 tore the fabric of the nation apart, but at least it was a single, fairly neat tear that could be stitched back together. This will be more like putting that fabric through a shredder and turning it into so much confetti.
People need people who don’t hate people without even knowing them.
Rosinante:
Propaganda? I don’t care whether what I write is propaganda; the important thing is whether it is true. Guess what – true tales are often used as propaganda. As a rule, everything anybody reads about the Civil War is propaganda because every historian of the subject has some kind of axe to grind. Conflicting historiography is part of life, especially when one is talking about the American Civil War. Get used to it.
As a rule, I call the War of Southern Insurrection “The Civil War” because it is the most well recognized term for the war. Besides, the term “Civil War” is more tasteful than “War of Southern Insurrection” or “War of the Rebellion”. I am well aware that some historians have made reference to “The War Between the States”, “The War of Southern Secession”, and the “War of Northern Aggression”. The term “Civil War” is standard.
On Google, “American Civil War” tallies 3.2 million results. “War of Secession” tallies 1.16 million results. “War of the Rebellion” together with “United States” tallies 1.02 million results. “U.S. Civil War” tallies 660,000 results. “War Between the States” tallies 578,000 results. So, given that “Civil War” is the standard and commonly used phrase for referring to the War of the Rebellion, I am inclined to stick with it.
Have you ever heard of the Cornerstone Speech given by Vice President Alexander Stephens of the so-called “Confederate States of America”? He had some rather interesting words to say about the ideas of Thomas Jefferson.
The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.
Whatever else other “Confederate” politicians said, Alexander Stephens did make it abundantly clear that the cornerstone of the Confederacy was the enslavement of the negro. This contrasts greatly with the later historiography written by the same man.
I don’t think the rise of machines would have ended slavery at all. Although slavery was a highly inefficient means of industrial production, owning slaves was a highly prized badge of status in slave states. So, far from ending slavery, I think the use of machines and free labor would have led to the expansion of slavery as a means of conspicuous consumption within the middle class.
Were many northerners bigots during the Civil War? Of course. Anti-black bigotry was a political norm in nineteenth and early twentieth century America. There are northern bigots to this day, just as there are southern bigots to this day. For that matter, I suspect that John C. Calhoun’s political views may have been strongly influenced by anti-southern bigotry he felt while he was a student at Yale.
Slavery was the principal cause for the Civil War. Was it the only one? Heavens, no! One commonly overlooked reason is that many men on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line were looking for a fight. The “Confederacy” didn’t need to fire on Fort Sumter (and give a ready made pretext to Abraham Lincoln).
My point about the effect of black troops during the Civil War still stands. After the “Confederate” victory at Fort Pillow, Abraham Lincoln was able to deter the mass execution of black Union prisoners by threatening to execute rebel prisoners. The fact that General Forrest would have regarded the execution of black prisoners necessary is a testament to capacity of black soldiers to unnerve him. Moreover, the refusal of the “Confederacy” to exchange black Union prisoners for “Confederate” prisoners shows just how much of a sore point the sight of black men in uniform had become.
For that matter, consider the effect of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics.
I think the idea of a robot uprising is a staple of science fiction precisely because it can be used as an allegory for class warfare and slave uprising.
both theories of confederate motivation are right –the landed gentry, planters, chevalier society wanted to keep the slaves pickin’ their cotton, the learned boojwahzee fell upon defense of state’s rights seen in the Constitution, and johnny reb the soldier boy was afighting for his family and friends and they homeland. These three themes are what is seen in the vast body of evidence they created –books written, newspaper editorials, reams of letters from plain folk to loved ones, and so forth.
The Battle of Fort Sumter, the catalyst what started the fight, took place a full four months after S. Carolina had officially seceded.
During that four months, the Charleston mayor and officials had been in constant contact with the fort’s command, trying to find a way to peacefully return the garrison to the union. Offers of train tickets, free passage to relief vessels, whatnot. Foodstuffs were regularly traded as usual tho now unofficially. Two seperate high-level delegations journeyed to DC to lobby for a commercial deal, a Carolinian purchase of the federal property in the ongoing construction refurbishment of the old fort; these delegations were referred up the chain to the president himself –who refused to see them, ignoring daily requests over periods of weeks in both occasions.
When the union announced a naval resupply convoy would be sent a few weeks hence to resupply the garrison, the South Carolinians made great effort to talk the federal gov’t out of running this convoy, as it would amount to an armed foreign navy entering into Charleston harbor under hostile conditions.
When the convoy launched anyway, the confederate command communicated with the fort command, announcing that if the situation maintained as is, that at a certain hour on a certain day, a bombardment would have to ensue, to attempt to force a surrender before the union navy arrived.
Duly, when the time came and the cannons fired, the garrison was well under cover. When –after a sufficient fire to allow the honorable surrender –the white flag went up, not a single federal soldier had been killed or wounded. However, and unfortunately, when by pre-arrangement with the confederate command the garrison fired off a salute as part of the lowering of the flag ceremony, one of their own cannon blew up and injured several and iirc killed one of the federal cannoneers.
And that was it, the federal garrison evacuated back to DC, and the island in Charleston harbor and the fort upon it passed to the confederate state of south carolina. Soon after, union armies would cross the borders into the confederacy and attempt to establish federal control of the new capital of the new nation in Richmond, Virginia. Confederate armies would oppose this movement, and so commenced a war.
i forgot to write my summary –it was to say that of those three great southern resistance themes, the planters may have wanted to go to war to hold onto their african slaves, but there weren’t but about thirty thousand of them all told, and they were scattered all over the south, and could not have offered much of a war had they even tried.
The second group, the scholars, merchants, and professionals angry over sundry points of order pertaining to the states rights disputations, may have wanted to fight, but there weren’t enough of them, and they were old, and had properties and families and accounts to maintain, and also could not have offered much of a war had they even tried.
It was the third group which could offer a real war –they were many, they were young, they had little to hold them to a homestead usually still being farmed by ma and pa anyway. This was the private soldier, and what he was fighting for, according to what he said in his hundreds of thousands of surviving letters, was that a great horde of yankee soldiers had up and stormed acrost the state borderlines into the south and seemed for all evidence to be hellbent to play havoc on their homesteads, unless they were somehow made to cease and desist and go on back home.
And that my friends is how the cow ate the corn, according to an Alabama born, Louisiana bred, Texan who has looked into this matter fairly keenly, having summered childhoods with grandparents in Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, where a great battle had been fought in 1864 and the old folks were still pretty pissed off, as late as the 1950s when sometimes a little scamp would listen at their talk, about the nerve of them yankee fellers coming up the river and tearing up everybodys farms and eating up all the stocks and stores.
Slaves? there weren’t none anywhere nearabouts, maybe some over on the mizzizzippi river a weeks ride away, but who needs them to fight over when theys a passel of yankee foragers out in the yard grabbin up the hens and hogtying the hog?
“The term “Civil War” is standard.”
For yankees, yeah. But even today no true southernor would be caught using the term.
Buddy – agree completely with your assessment of who did the fighting. Saw an interesting stat once that explained why Texas troops were so heavily involved in every theatre of that war (Lee’s favorite divisions, reportedly) even though in 1861 the population of Texas was still relatively small, there was very little slavery except near the Louisiana borders, and it was more than a thousand miles away from the main scenes of the conflict.
Gotta remember that at that time Texas was still the frontier, full of Indian fights, and the place where every man who wanted to carve out a place for himself was headed. Because of that, in 1861 70% of the Texas population consisted of males *under* the age of 30!!!
No wonder the place got the reputation it did! But if you want to build an army, that’s the kind of demographics you want to work with.
wws/74; pretty astounding statistic but it does fit. Another thing is the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad were no further away to them than the Reagan administration is to us, and those two cases of course would lead one to reckon that if a fight there had to be, best not get caught by surprise cooped up at home.
wws:
“The term “Civil War” is standard.”
For yankees, yeah. But even today no true southernor would be caught using the term.
“True” southerner? True southerner? Let me get this straight – are you saying that Southern Unionists weren’t true southerners? There are some parts of America where those would be “fightin’ words”.
Are you telling me that the residents of Winston County aren’t “true southerners”? Are the residents of Winston County, Alabama really a bunch of “Yankees”? Are you telling me Andrew Johnson wasn’t a “true southerner”? Are you telling me Sam Houston wasn’t a “true southerner”?
The reality of the United States during the War of Insurrection is mixed. The South had pockets of strong Unionist sentiment as well as slaves who wanted to be free. The North had its Copperheads. Indeed, many anti-war activists in the past nine years have acted just like old-fashioned Copperheads. Each side of the war had its fifth column.
Moreover, it would make as much sense to call the War of Insurrection the “American Civil War” as call refer to the 1930’s strife in Spain as the “Spanish Civil War”, especially given that German and Italian forces intervened in Spain on the Rebel or “nationalist” side while “International Brigades” fought on the Republican side. For that matter, is the “Nigerian Civil War” really the “Biafran War” or the “Nigerian-Biafran War”?
Given slave state designs on Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, California, and Indian Territory, I am deeply skeptical of claims that it was all about “northern aggression”. If the “Confederacy” had won, this would have created a chokehold in the Upper Mississippi and Upper Missouri regions under Union control, thus destabilizing the North. And St. Louis (by then anti-slavery stronghold) would have been under occupation.
Not to sound too Panglossian, but I do think there are worse scenarios than Union victory. It ought to be possible to be a true Unionist and a true Southerner.
it’s common to both be glad the country held together and banished slavery and did not balkanize into multiple yugoslavias, and yet still be sympathetic to certain elements within the losing side –elements such as the fight the johnny reb put up against overwhelming odds in numbers and materiel, and the reasons for that fight from that rank & filer’s point of view.
This of course is the framing problem seen in the stars-and-bars confederate battle flag dispute: some see the flag as a racist symbol and assume that everyone else must see it that way too. Others see it as a banner under which their kinfolk died trying to save the family farm from a government tyranny which felt little different that of King George III, fought off only a couple generations earlier and now back in bluecoat rather than red, and since the banner had always been a resistance symbol bloodied by valor of kith and kin, object now to being ordered to arbitrarily and suddenly re-frame all that, and adopt a brand new politically-corrected point of view which mandates a disgust for the old rag.
it’s like tellin’ great great grandpa, who fought with all his heart against the invasion but would never have lifted a finger to fight for the rich planters and their chattel rights or whatever, to go screw himself. the old attitude persists in redneck bikers and rockers and such –think they’d go to war to protect JPMorgan’s profit margins? Naw –but they’d go to war over getting pushed around by strangers and their arbitrary rules, for sure. And, they’d probably lose again –like the Polish Cavalry charging horseback against German armored columns –
Teresita said:
Doll, you need to meet a better class of men. You are not even close.
Oh, nevermind. You think all men are like your gay men-friends is my estimation.
That is just dishonest and gets you troll status for a while. Go here:
http://rochester.indymedia.org/newswire/display/21818/index.php
Excellent piece, Richard. Modern journalism has taken the place of the modern novel – discuss.