Coming to a Conclusion

It's the week before exams, I've got papers to plow through and a thousand other things to do, and I just haven't got the time to do that and write any but superficial blogs. And really, who needs one more voice guessing as to what the next week will bring?


So I'm taking a blogbreak for a while to get some things that I need to get done, done. If the world shakes, I might take notice, but for the moment, I must plow through papers.

Should Have Stayed in Bed, Redux

Mostly on the mend now, but fighting off the virus has left me completely drained. The heat is, of course, not helping. I hope to be back again tommorrow. Bear with me.

Sunk Pucks

My musical tastes tend to evolve in historical fashion. My starting point, the first time I really decided to get "into" pop music, was the early Rolling Stones, back when the thunder of the arena hadn't bleached their simple swagger. From thence, I have simultaneously gone forward and backward: Forward through 60's Invasion and Garage rock through to 70's Punk and now, 80's Hardcore (the move to Fugazi is tempting), backward through older and older blues (most recently I got into Big Bill Broonzy, a contemporary of Robert Johnson) and Jazz. Everything fits onto a gigantic Critical Tree in my head.

That said, I'm not getting a lot of what passes for punk these days. The music is starting to bore me. In the fight between the "arties" (music for creativity's sake) and the "social realists" (music for the revolution) that came in the wake of the Sex Pistols demise in 1978 and the DOA failure of the New York scene, the social realists won, hands down, driving the poor arties to New Wave and other excuses for bad hair. The social realists, meanwhile, insisted on making punk serve the call to arms of the New Tommorrow. The result has been as monotonous as Stalin-era Soviet painting. If a band's not emulating Black Flag, complete with screaming and stuffing every concievable musical phrase into a 3-minute song, they're emulating the Descendents, with trebly melodies and insufferably nasal and whiny vocals. Maybe I'm getting old, but it's all starting to hurt my ears.

Worst of all is the way the genre has marketed itself to oblivion. I refer to the hyphenation. Each sub-sub-sub-genre comes complete with costume, tune template, and ready-made audience. Reality overtakes parody: I used to joke about things like cow-core or emo-oi, only to see them sprout into being. Got a song about your sensitive side? Bang, you're emo, whether you like it or not. Got a riff lifted from Gene Vincent? You're punkabilly or psychobilly. Got a skull somewhere on your record? Welcome to horror-core. This is Glenn; he'll be making fun of you.

The point is, it's become as unlikely to hear something you haven't heard before on a punk record as it is on a Britney Spears disc. Punk, which was supposed to eschew the same old thing, has become the same old thing, dedicated only to cloning itself, with the same clothes, the same sounds, the same preachy solipsistic thug liberalism. Punks are the Teddy Boys of the Left.

The preceding is prologue to me adding Conservative Punk to the linksheet. I do so with a few caveats. The site has yet to really impress me. It defines itself as an antidote to Punk Voter, which is fine as far as it goes, but somehow insufficient. It's not enough to be negative, to define yourself as against the tide. Destruction may lead to creation, but, contrary to all those folk Jon Savage quotes in England's Dreaming, it is not creative in itself. Left to itself, destruction merely frees up space.

In other words, it's well past time for punk to learn how to praise, how to build, how to appreciate. Such things have worn the label of "uncool," for way too long. Snideness and gesture do not sustain: they must be followed up. This is going to require thought and effort, and openminded-ness (real open-mindedness, not the kind that leads you to what you already want to think).

And music. Let's not forget the music. Tell your truth with a smile and a swagger and they'll believe you believe it, and that's half the battle. Thunder in the night forever.

Comfortably Numb

P.J. O'Rourke once described an XTC hangover as feeling like "I was in the other room and I couldn't quite hear me." It's one of those phrases I've thrown in to relevant conversation, confident that most haven't read O'Rourke's early stuff and so I'll get the clever award (this is one of my worst habits, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone). At any rate, that's largely how I feel today: wiped, hollow, bloodless. Unlike yesterday, however, I can probably make it through the end of the school day, and from thence rush home to enjoy chicken soup and I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi. So that gives me some time to blog.

Should Have Stayed in Bed

I'm not feeling well today, so I'm looking to go home early. Consequently, no big blog today. Perhaps tommorrow I shall tackle the issue of what constitutes news.


For today, one good turn deserves another, so here's a link to Kyle Altis' livejournal. S'true, he and I see eye-to-eye on little (I blame contact lenses). But that's supposed to be what makes communication fun.

When in Cannes

I've been watching a film, The Mission, which concerns the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay in the 18th century. Like many natives, the women of the Guarani walked about with their breasts bared. Not even Jesuits seemed to make anything of it.


I cannot help but contrast this with the attention granted Alexandra Kerry's mammaries, because she is the daughter of someone running for president, and people seem interested in saying WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?, as though breasts in southern France are some kind of rare and precious sighting. It begs the question of whether the media, by focusing our eyes on what they can manage to find, are able to offer anything which is not irrelevant and distorted.


The same goes for Michael Moore. Under what reasoning is this something that the public must know of? In what way is this surprising? Is this evidence of anything other than the fact that denouncing American governments is popular in France? Can there be a message to take other than the one intended?


Of course, I tread the edge of an abyss named "What is News?" But some abysses are worth exploring.

Commentary

I am aware that the comment feature does not appear to be working. I will try to change that just as soon as I get the time and inclination to wrestle with Scriptylla and Codebydis. Thanks to Kyle Altis for the heads-up and whatnot. I appreciate it, and meant to email you on the subject, but I'm also in the process of switching emails...

14:59:59

Lileks has a delightful set of arrows issued at someone who richly deserves it: the pompous, posing, Hunter Thompson. I stopped reading his cascades of woe some time ago; only someone with his drug intake could read into sporting events the grim fantasies that he does. His earlier writings are interesting because they begin After the Fall, as it were, when the Hippie Eden had already been closed off by the Cherubim. Las Vegas becomes the perfect Nod/Enoch, where the Children of Cain feed off of each other in grotesque spectacles. Taken out of that context, even that early book is nothing but the adventures of two burned-out drug worms, who go looking for sarcasm and find it, whereupon they proceed to get high a lot, rise from their stupor a couple of times, and then drift somewhere else. The Death Wish is palpable; it lies splattered on the pages like one of Ralph Steadman's illustrations.


What fascinates is why so many are willing to believe, based on impression and conjecture, that Thompson's vision of the world is the true one. Is there a degree of surety in despair? Relief in surrender? Can it be that Communists and Hippies and ANSWER-ites want only to have the world and its history rendered simply, a long march to a just oblivion/nirvana?


Peace.

Creating a Paper Trail?

It would appear that Syria is next on our list of targets. The Bush Administration must believe, as I and many others do, that Iran may collapse of its own weight. Going after Syria would also have the advantage of Lebanese liberation, and possible help from our only ally in the region, the Israelis.


Or I could be drowning in a warm pile of conjecture.

A Statement of Philosophy

I alluded on my very first day of publishing this site to previous efforts I have made in keeping an online column. My favorite was a weekly affair I managed for several months in 2000-2001 or thereabouts, called The Reality Principle. Most of my work vanished when the site went down (woe betide those who forget to check their email). Nevertheless the idea itself was useful, as a focus for asking questions about major issues.


To wit: the Reality Principle states that everything which exists does so for a reason, hence it is folly to attempt to undo or alter anything which exists without understanding and addressing that reason. Obvious, no? Yet how rarely does anyone in our culture say so. Liberals and Conservatives alike move to institute great change in a short sequence of time, before the news cycle makes their arguments yesterday's arguments. The gay marriage debate, on which I have written extensively here and here, is a perfect example of scorched-earth, to-the-barricades, apocalyptic-vision debate. It may be that the centrality of the issue warrants such rhetoric. But it's easy to see that it's produced a great deal of hysteria and name-calling, even among those who understand one another.


And that's something of a side issue. How can we intelligently debate a war? How can we consider whether a military effort against a nebulous enemy is going well or poorly, based on what information those fighting the war see fit to provide us? Moreover, how can we have discuss this without appreciating the efforts of anti-guerrilla warfare that have come before: our success in the Phillipines 100 years ago, the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria, the Russians in Afghanistan. We have heard nothing from those whose supposed task is to inform us about this context. All we have heard, and without anything that could be called analysis, is Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. Whether this represents the fundamental ignorance of our citizenry or our media is open to debate.


My purpose, therefore, will be to write about the reality that is otherwise buried. This is a subjective statement, and I therefore choose to confont my bias. I lean to the right. Doing so satisfies my education, experience, and emotional touchstones. However, I also find that leaning to the right easier allows me to look at truth-on-the-ground, as opposed to Macro-Historical Truth or Progressive Truth. While both sides violate the Reality Principle when it suits them, the Left does so with less guilt and less appreciation. This is a function of their worldview, which tends to look to the past to distinguish it from the promised Future, as a way of demonstrating that the present is too much like the former to be allowed to continue.


But it should not be construed that the purpose of this site will any longer be dinging the Left (though it will probably happen). There are plenty of sites that do that just fine, and on the linksheet they will stay. Henceforth I will be interested in looking for reality, and letting it stand as such.

Hi. It's Hot.

And I have become Captain Obvious. I have also become disheartened at the "scandal" idiocy that seems to have inflamed the national conscience. I could sit here and dig up a historical defense for what we're doing in Iraq, and I could sit here and point out to you that we aren't doing nearly as badly as it would seem. And if you were on the right, you'd accept these views with a "right on, brother," and come away having really learned little that you did not already believe to be true. If you were on the other side, you'd very probably conclude that I was off my rocker, and emotionally incapable of dealing with what is perfectly obvious to you, that everything is falling apart.


Given that, I feel like I might as well say ekke-ekke-ekke f'TANG zurgleebulnffgnr... in all my blog posts. But that's Despair, arguably the worst of all the sins, because it's the enabler of every other one, just as Courage is the greatest of virtues, because it strengthens all the others.


So what I'm going to do is sit in the heat and ponder. And try to turn this site into what I've always wanted it to be, a collection of essays rather than an echo of Instapundit and NRO. This will require me to do some new thinking, and I may be off for a couple of days...


In the meantime, it's hot.

GUYS! HELLO!

Whenever the subject of bias in the media comes up, I always labor under the assumption that said bias is unconcious. Given the high esteem, with which journalists hold their profession (hey, someone has to), I consider it unlikely that they would deliberately withhold information from the public. But the consistent failure of the mainstream press to report stories like this begs the question: are they consciously pursuing an agenda? If not, what is wrong with the institution that they don't see this or don't think it worth notifying the public on?

Open Season

As of this writing, comments should be enabled on all future posts. If not, I may have to muck about with the code. I hope not.


In any case, now is you opportunity to say everything you want about me and this tripe I publish. Bring it on.

Mea Culpa

Note: I meant to publish this yesterday. It didn't make it, for some reason.



It would appear that last week's ripping of Jon's post unsuriprisingly did not inspire warm fuzzies on his part, at least going by his blog from over the weekend. Sorry, old man. It was probably an overreaction on my part. I think I was sent over the edge by the "republicans = not too bright" comment. I'm gettin' crochety in my old age.

Good Morning

My classroom was taken over this morning by loud, brainless seniors. I'll blog more later, after I've recovered my sense of purpose.


Three more weeks of classes...

One more for the road.

I have been a horrible grump, all day. This is because, just before I went to bed last night, my home computer got hit with the Sasser worm that shuts down your PC whenever you get online. I tried for hours, through various ISP's, to get enough time to download the security patch that fixes it, but all for naught. I didn't even tell my girlfriend what had happened, because I knew that to do so would unleash a chorus of invective, and I was trying to calm down (sorry, honey).


I would dearly like to know, who in the hell thinks this is an amusing way to spend your time, coming up with attack software to bother other people you don't even know. What's the thrill? "Oooh, look, here's a guy checking his bank balance, I'm gonna shut his computer off! Here's someone emailing his grandmother, I'm gonna shut his computer off! This guy's looking at pregnant-woman porn, I'm gonna...shut his computer off..." All I could think about was how I'd like to sit the little punk who designed this worm down and explain to him that there was a Charity Codec Failure, that is causing C://Andrew/fists/right.knkl to initiate a face core dump, and therefore your consciousness will terminate in :05 seconds. Please close any eyes you might have open...


'Course, that may well be what those chuzzlewits in Abu Ghraib were feeling.




This concludes WARBLOG WEEK at the Notion. Have a merry weekend. Next week's posts will be all about Music, poetry, and bunnies; I swear.

Long has the Sword Been Red

In 1396, a combined army of French Crusaders and Hungarians went to war to stop the Ottoman Turks from engulfing the Byzantine Empire. The French refused to co-ordinate their efforts with those of Sigismund of Hungary and ran into a trap. The Hungarians might still have won the day had not Serbian allies of the Turks ambushed them. The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, furious at his army's heavy casualties, orders the prisoners put to the sword.


When I think on the savagery at Abu Grhaib, this is what comes to mind: how easy it is to abuse those you have power over, those who have angered you. It matters not what uniform deals out the abuse, it is the same impulse, the same loss of moral control. It should always be condemned. It pleases me that we are.




Update: It gets worse. Skeptical appears to have been right, according to this: abuse of the prisoners was widespread throughout the prison. What a depressing predicament. But so be it. Let the news come out now, and let the guilty be punished before the eyes of the world.


And then let's blow that damn prison up.

Them's Fightin' Words

When I was in college, I was in the enviable position of Token Rightie in my group of friends. This is a gig that requires a strong sense of self, and the amazing capacity to nod and smile at what you find annoying. You do this not because you have no argument with the assumptions of your left-leaning pals, but because raising the argument requires more energy than it's worth. I'll never forget being buttonholed by three pals who were positive that the U.S. should slash the Defense Department to ribbons because they couldn't imagine us ever being at war again ("C'mon, whose gonna fight us?" they asked, as if I had a magic 8-ball that would percieve all conflicts). Eventually, you learn to just let them be.


All this is preface to the fisking I am about to impart against one such member of the old gang. As I said when I put Jon's Department of Homeland Security Blog on the linksheet, Jon's a cool cat and a quick wit, and sharp when he knows what he's talking about. But today he doesn't, and so I propose to show:

i know that it's unpopular to speak out against the war in iraq and afghanistan. i know that it's especially unpopular to speak out against someone like ex-NFL football player, pat tillman, who died during combat in afghanistan. yet, rene gonzalez of the daily collegian did just that, writing an article describing how pat tillman "got what he deserved."

The preceding is dripping with a pose that pisses me off. Since when is it "unpopular" to speak against the war? Everybody that had a mind has been speaking against the war since it started. They're called Democrats, and they really need to lose the martyrdom complex they seem to have developed. We do not have mobs running through the streets erecting guillotines to punish thoughtcrime. We do not have an Un-American Activities Committee bringing people before it and asking them if they've ever spoke against the Great Patriotic War Against the Forces of Satan. You're not a lone voice boldly bucking the trend. People happen to disagree with you, and they say so. Get over yourself.

now, i don't agree with everything that mr. gonzalez has to say. he does make some good points in his article, but unjustifiably takes blatant cheap shots at pat tillman. i mean, c'mon, dude, the guy just died in a war. and it would take an extreme circumstance for me to ever say that someone who was brutally killed "got what he deserved." but, aside from the childish attacks, which are unfortunately overabundant, gonzalez does have some good points.

Which are...?

not surprisingly, gonzalez is being lambasted. surely, the attacks against gonzalez' childish insults are warranted. but, to say that he is an american hater? that's basically just taking it to the other extreme. of course, the people criticizing gonzalez don't see it that way. they think, "how dare he say that pat tillman is not a hero?! the man died for our country! he died for you! for me! for us!"



yeah. great. what were you saying? sorry, i wasn't really paying attention. i was too busy picking out all the chocolate pieces in my chips ahoy.

I'm assuming that somewhere in this flippancy there's an argument, but I'm not seeing it. Perhaps you should eat something before you engage in debate. Or you should learn to like chocolate.

look, it's not that i'm unsympathetic. any man who serves in the military of any country has my utmost respect in regards to self-sacrifice. of course pat tillman showed tremendous courage. of course pat tillman is not your typical american. in fact, the irony of this is that pat tillman is the most celebrated unamerican american in recent memory. after all, what is more american than hoarding money? yet tillman turned down millions to go fight in afghanistan. that is definitely unamerican. i mean, what true american is going to throw away a few million dollars for a chance to die?

It begs the question of why this non-american threw away his life to save us greedy american pustules. Maybe Tillman saw in us something worth saving.


Incidentally, Jon, I'm an American and I don't, to my knowledge, hoard money. I save some for the day when I won't be able to work, but that's about it. I'm pretty sure you don't hoard money, either. Who do you know that does?

the real problem here is that no distinction is being made between what tillman believed he was doing and what he was actually doing.



pat tillman believed that what he was doing was important. in actuality? well, apparently he wasn't too bright. or he was a republican. and let's be honest, there's not much difference.

Oh, touchez, D'Artagnan. Where DO you come up with them?

as gonzalez pointed out, it's not as if the united states was under attack and mr. tillman was defending his country. he volunteered to go overseas, to a hostile environment, to participate in a war that was started by the united states to protect the interests of united states politicians. that doesn't necessarily include your and my "security."

So no war that Americans fight overseas has anything to do with our security or defending ourselves. That would seem to include every war we've fought since Appomatox. Gee, too bad for those guys that got zilched storming the beaches of Normandy. They must not have been too bright. Maybe they were Democrats. DAMN I'm funny!

it's a tricky situation. i mean, the war that tillman fought in is a complete travesty. but it's unfair to criticize him for being so blinded. after all, ingorance can't be seen by the ignorant. so were his actions heroic? it's hard to say.

The first statement here is offered without evidence. The second is patronizing to the point of being insulting. The third has a glaring spelling error of too-perfect irony.


I believe you've scored a hat trick.

let's say that, for example, you are standing in the woods. all of a sudden, a big, scary looking wild animal approaches you. in the immediate proximity of that animal you are by yourself, but off to the side there are two animal experts who are close by. one expert tells you that the animal could attack you at any moment, and there's not really much you can do to prevent him from attacking you should it decide to, so to be aware of whats going on. the other expert tells you that the chances of that animal attacking you are extremely low unless you provoke it, so you should just slowly walk away from the animal and no harm will come to you.

The last thing I ought to be doing after my "charity organization" analogy this week ("I'm Vague Man! I live in a house! I drive a car! I go to a job! I do stuff!"), is peeing on somebody else's analogy. But I think the "wild animal" here should have a few more descriptors to make it appropriate to the war. Like the fact that the wild animal just ate a family of four in an SUV. It might not do the same to you, true, but...

so, you start to back away... then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a random person comes charging at the animal. he fights the wild animal valiantly, as you quickly move to safety. unfortunately, the animal kills the man.



so, is that man a hero? did he save your life? did he protect you?



maybe. but, it was probably pointless. you probably would've been fine without his help. so, should you laud his stupidity?

Or maybe he knew something that you didn't know. It's arrogant in the extreme to assume that you would have been fine just because one of the two experts said so. The other expert and they guy who just laid down his life said otherwise. Why are their viewpoints thrown aside?


I do like your use of the word "laud" though. It's one of my favorites.

it's a yes and no kind of thing. yes, he was brave and did what he did because he thought he was being helpful. but, no, he really didn't do anything except get himself killed.



it's sort of like not being religious and having someone tell you they're going to pray for you. to them, what they're doing is helpful. to you, it's like, "whoop-de-shit."

OR, maybe they know something you don't know. And if the reverse is true, perhaps you could just try saying "thanks," and moving on with your day.


And before you conclude that what Tillman did didn't help in anyway, you'll need to find an explanation for this.

I'm down with the MST3K movie reference, though. well done.

i guess i just don't understand why this is such a big deal. i mean, do i really need to see his eulogy on television? two hours on espnews? fuck. enough is enough. i don't need to keep seeing pat tillman on television for a month and a half. just like i didn't need to see michael jackson holding his baby over the hotel balcony for a month, or howard dean screaming like a buffoon for two weeks.

Then. Turn. The. Damn. Thing. Off.

personally, i'd feel worse for a guy who got killed while trying to save a 7-11 clerk from getting shot, or a woman from getting raped, or a boy from being kidnapped, than i would pat tillman. that's just how i see it, and i'm not going to apologize for it.

Would you still feel that way if you had to watch two weeks of maudlin TV on the subject?

look, i don't have anything against the guy. he's not the one who is pissing me off. again, i do think that what he did was incredibly brave and totally unselfish, and he certainly deserves credit for giving up a shitload of money for something he believed in. but, truthfully, it shouldn't be automatically labeled as "heroic."

So...doing something incredibly brave and totally unselfish, and giving up piles of cash for something you believe in is not necessarily "heroic." What exactly IS "heroic," then?

let's be honest. if he, for example, became a born again christian and decided that he wanted to serve god and be a priest, would people think that what he did was great? maybe a few. but most people would be saying to themselves, "this guy passed up millions of dollars to violate the poop chutes of little boys? what a moron."

Oh, of course. That MUST be the only real reason why anyone would become a priest. Because the reasons they SAY they're doing it can't possibly be valid. I've seen x+1 news reports about priests making boys play hide-the-bratwurst, so that's all Christianity means to me. By the way, Republicans are ingorant!


Incidentally, catholic priests are not "born-again." That tedious phrase is reserved for evangelical protestants who, to their credit, have generally NOT been accused of molestation. Just helping you out.

it hurts me when i hear about the stories of other famous athletes whose lives were tragically taken from them, as well.



roberto clemente. thurman munson. darryl kile. reggie lewis. hank gathers.



those are just a few men whose deaths will always sadden me. now i will add pat tillman's name to that list. but, the difference between pat tillman and those other athletes is that he put himself in harm's way.

So a sports guy who dies in a plane crash is a bigger loss than a sports guy who dies in a war, because he didn't have to do that. Which is why we call it "heroic".

the bottom line is that the problem i have is not with pat tillman. it's with the media, who once again is oversaturating the shit out of something and making it more relevant that it really is; and it's with assholes who can't accept that some people don't find what pat tillman did heroic. in fact, some of us find it kind of dumb.



that doesn't make his death any less sad or tragic. on the contrary. from where i stand, his death is more disturbing.

We've now managed to work our way to the position where the battlefield death of a guy who gives up the good life to fight for his country is not "heroic," but "dumb," or "disturbing." Yet we persist in believing that we know what "most people" think.

look, whether or not you agree with the opinions that mr. gonzalez and i have (although, mine is certainly more forgiving than gonzalez'), at least give us the right to express them, especially if they are educated and well-thought (which, to be fair, much of gonzalez' weren't). it's one of the rights we have under the constitution that pat tillman thought he was fighting for.

PLEASE climb off the cross. No one is nailing you to it. All we're doing is arguing that what you're saying is poorly-thought-out. It's one of the rights we have under the constitutions that Pat Tillman thought he was fighting for.




I have no doubt that I'm going to feel guilty about this later. Or I might get madder when Jon returns fire. The future, she is a sneaky wench, always running away...

A Quick Comparison

Here's what I wrote just about a year ago, with regard to the whole point of the WOT:

The Bush Doctrine, issued soon after 9/11, was clear: there is no distinction between terrorists and states who support terrorists. Afghanistan, the crash-pad of Public Enemy Number One, was the first state to discover that Bush meant it. The link between the Taliban and al-Quaeda was evident. With Iraq it was more tenuous, but put your mind at rest. Saddam knew terrorists, and gave them money and safe haven. He had to go. Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia will all be dealt with, according to different schedules and strategies. The fact that his WMD's are better hidden than we had anticipated isn't relevant. That's one less source of support for Hezbollah and every other cell of hate that plagues our world. Let's not be legalistic. Do you really think we can annihilate al-Quaeda, leave the rest, and be any safer?

Here's what Michael Totten wrote in TechCentralStation today, on the same subject:

It makes little sense to declare war on Al Qaeda while ignoring Al Qaeda's Islamist allies in terror like Hezbollah and Hamas. And it makes little sense to declare war against Hezbollah and Hamas while ignoring the Baathist states (Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq) and the Islamist states (Saudi Arabia and Iran) who provide them financial aid, material aid, military aid, and real estate. Most are networked together, sometimes loosely, other times less so. Hezbollah was created by Iran. The Taliban was a product of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency and was backed by Saudi Arabian patronage. Not every group is linked to every other group. Sometimes the connections are slight and indirect, as seems to have been the case with Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. (No one should be surprised, though, that Sudan did for a while harbor Osama bin Laden.) Algeria's death squads appear to be hooked up with no one, but they are products of the same cultural sickness. They're the ideological twins of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. All these groups have a few things in common. They're all Islamic, they're all totalitarian, and they're all up to their eyeballs in terror. If Al Qaeda ceases utterly to exist tomorrow, and if everything else in the Muslim world is preserved exactly as it is now, would it really be time to declare victory? I do not think so. Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia would continue to suffer spasms of massive violence while we in the West await the next extremist wave to crash on our shores.

If there's a fault I have for the Bush Administration, it's that he hasn't made this quite clear enough: that the enemy is larger than al Qaeda. Perhaps if he had, we wouldn't be wasting our time arguing about legalities like WMD's. The status quo in the Middle East is the enemy. We must devote ourselves to undoing it. That is forward-thinking, revolutionary, and the only way we'll ever win.


And I called it then. Should I be paid for this, or what?

By the Bye...

As regards the whole Prisoner Abuse donnybrook, I think a few things should be obvious:




1. This was some seriously immoral behavior.


2. This was some seriously irresponsible behavior


3. There is no justification for this behavior.


4. Them as have done it should be sent to enjoy the rest of their lives at sunny Leavenworth.




That said, let's just do what we've been doing: breathe and move on. This isn't representative; this doesn't make us worse than Saddam. Saddam did this every day for thirty years, he covered it up, encouraged his society to ignore it, and had no intention of ever redressing it. We've been there but a year, we've allowed the allegations to see the light of day, we aren't ignoring it, and we're going to punish those responsible. If you are unable to percieve the difference, that isn't my problem.

Kill the Beast

Here's the kind of story that we've become altogether too used to seeing. The Cannes Film Festival is preparing for protests and problems from unemployed actors and stagehands, who are unhappy about changes to their unemployment benefits.


Ya love that? People who aren't working are mad because the money they receive for doing nothing, the money that they get out of the charity of the society they live in, might be changing in a way that they don't appreciate. Why, how dare anyone interfere with their right to collect!


And they're being taken seriously, lest they force the Cannes film festival to cancel. This is madness. This is something out of an Ayn Rand novel. This is not the way.

In or Out

Imagine, if you will, that you have an organization devoted to doing charity work. You meet regularly and have a nice system and structure, world contacts, the works. As a part of membership, you require that everyone refrain from spending money on silly things (big screen TV's, third cars, etc.), in order that they more greatly appreciate the things that they have, and so that more of their income can be given to charity. Everyone accepts this as a logical consequence of your organizations beliefs and goals.


Then imagine that some members start to balk at this requirement. They feel that it's too intrusive and not really relevant to whether a person is truly working towards the organizations charitable goals. A few begin to openly flout it, holding big parades where they show off their new flat-screen plasma sets with 6-speaker stereo surround sound and Mustangs for their 16-year-olds. Many become angry at these heretics, and start committees devoted to condemning them and returning to the organization's simple goals. Many more take a conciliatory approach, declaring that while they don't have a big-screen TV themselves, the decision to have a big-screen TV or not is a personal decision, utterly divorced from any other consideration. The leadership affirms the original requirements but takes no action against those that ignore them.


The result of all this squabbling is a noticeable decline in actual charitable work. The anti-big-screen crowd, or as they prefer to be called, "pro-simplicity", start devoting their energies and resources to causes that undermine the arguments of the pro-big-screen crowd, who prefer to be called "pro-choice," and do likewise. Membership begins to decline because people are tired of listening to it.


You're the leader of this organization. You believe in the not-buying-ostentatious things requirements. You believe that it accomplishes good things. What do you do with those that persistently ignore this requirement yet claim to be members of the organization?


You can a) continue to ignore the problem, b) change the rules to accomodate the pro-choice members, or c) demand that the pro-choice members accept the rules or face expulsion.


What do you do, hot shot? What do you do?


Some people might think it horrendous that the Catholic Church would start to deny communion to people who are pro-abortion. Andrew Sullivan, natch, chalks it up to theocon nastiness (I doubt he'd have a problem with the Church serving Mel Gibson in that capacity, however).


The exclusion from the sacrements, like excommunication, seems brutish, but is actually intended to be communicative, to indicate in the starkest terms possible that an individual's actions are endangering his immortal soul. It was a lot more effective when there was only one church to be a member of, but such is the way of things. But in a time when the Inquisition, and the idea that destroying the body will purge the soul is, thankfully, no more, exactly how shall the Church discipline its members? How shall those who consistently flout the church's teachings without regard to the moral considerations contained therein be dealt with? If the Church has not the authority to denounce immorality, and those who practice immorality, in the starkest terms, then it is effectively neutered. That many, for various reasons, would want it thus, I do not doubt. But it is not for such reasons that the Church exists.

I'm a Link-Makin' Fool

Last week I made a donation at Spirit of America to help the Marines help Iraqis and Afghans. I plan on making more. I invite anybody who wants to bring about an end to this clash of civilizations to do the same. We can either run away and hope they won't hurt us or stick it out. We are cursed to live in interesting times, let's make the most of it.

Alternative News

I don't know who writes the Belmont Club blog, but I am putting him at the top of the linksheet. He has steadied me in many a gloomy hour, because he/she knows what few in our country realize: military operations are many times more complicated than they appear in the media, and the lag of reported/unreported is vast indeed. And he writes with the assurance of someone who is familiar with his subject matter enough to know what he does not know.


Today's post contains heady words:

And within that web of doubt America must grapple with a single burning certainty: that unless it can bring a functioning democracy to the Middle East and militarily defeat the terrorist threat it will find its very national existence threatened. Optimism is a word for nothing left to lose.

Indeed.