Al-Qaeda Starts to Lose

If journalists knew anything about...anything, they might be able to put certain trends together to see how well our counterinsurgency is faring. A few things they might notice, such as the inability of the insurgents from stopping the Iraqi Government from continuing to build its military. Or a change of leadership among Al-Qaeda. Or that the numerous reports of "red-on-red" infighting is a result of a determined campaign, and not merely a cascade of confused bloodletting.

For all of these tidbits, look here. I find the Anbar tribes' campaign especially interesting, as it leads me to believe that the Iraqis have found their Los Pepes after all.

Mean Girls, Boo Hoo

Lemme just say, as an educator and as a male, that this is a bunch of bunk. School biased in favor of girls? Boys need to be encouraged more? Maybe, maybe. But maybe the boys simply need to get off their dead arses and perform. It's high school, for Faber's sake. And public high school at that. How hard can it be?

Look, I've long been of the opinion that some of the things they do to boost girls' self-esteem would be counter-productive. Self-esteem boosting usually is. In fact, if I had to pick one thing that schools shouldn't bother about, that would be it. Encourage kids, yes. Encourage groups to get all excited about their groupiness, no. Because the end result of shaping boys' esteem isn't going to be improved scores, but excused pathologies. "You don't understand, I'm a guy. I ain't got time for none of that note-taking, book-reading stuff! I'm a rebel! I go where the wind takes me!" Have we really gone, over the course of a century, from "Women cannot think nor write," to its gender opposite?

Anyone who thinks that teenage girls have an easier time sitting still and paying attention than teenage boys has never ever taught teenage girls. Teenage girls never shut up, whine when disciplined, and act as though the world revolves around the particular ephemera they find fascinating. They only perform if they come from families that expect it from them. The same is true for boys.

Maybe it's me, but I've rather enjoyed not belonging to a Designated Victim Group. It meant I had no one to excuse my failures, and conversely, no one to put an asterisk next to my successes, such as they are. That's the creed that millions of men across the country live by: my life, my choices, my results. I really don't care to be turned into another sniveling worm under the lash of the Designated Oppressor.

Because in the end, boys, there's really nothing less manly than whimpering "the girls made me feel bad about myself." Should young gentlemen get outlets for their restless energy. Yes. Should we bring back Dodgeball? Yes. Should we dispense with all the gender-specific ego-encouraging? Yes, yes, YES.

The only way to have sanity in education is to insist on standards and keep to them, and stop making excuses for those who aren't interested. If boys don't wanna learn, indeed resist learning, maybe we should check what signals they're getting about learning from the outside culture.

I begin to wonder if reading books hasn't become a "girl thing" among boys, as it's become a "white thing" in the inner city. Do guys talk about literature and the arts with other guys? 'Course not, only gay guys do that, right? What do men talk about? Sports, music, cars, "guy stuff." Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of guy stuff. But you shouldn't be thought odd because you can discourse cleverly on Neo-expressionist paintings or tell a Shakespearean from a Petrarchan sonnet (and conversely, all the guys who can do that need to stop acting as though being downwind of an understanding of the nickel defense will rob them of their souls). But that notion of male intellect is enforced by just about everything you see in popular culture. Think that message doesn't get through to boys, while schools are saying "You go!" to to the girls?

It's really very simple. When the culture values and promotes intelligent manliness, we'll have some. Until then, enjoy the perfumed air of college graduations.

On Blackness of Pots and Kettles

The strangest thing about this piece is not that it's purported humor failed to make me laugh even once, despite the obvious imagination used in passing down of "sentences" of "Loathsome People." People get their giggles from the oddest places, as some of the newer shows on Adult Swim indicate.

No the strangest thing is the accusation it levels against Michelle Malkin (who linked it at her own site, without commentary):

Her accusations of blind hatred and vitriol mimic soul sister Ann Coulter’s classic tactic of psychological projection: whatever Malkin is, she sees in her opponents.

Now absorb that, and absorb the rest of the list: does it strike you as being short of hatred, vitriol, cheap shots, prejudice, and superficiality? Count the parade of grostequeries issued as comments on the appearances of the targets. Is this truly meant to demonstrate the superior intellect that its tone assumes?

The answer, of course, is no. This is intended as nothing more than a bit of the old Two Minutes Hate, a reveling in contempt, a release of frustrations. There's plenty of that going round the blogosphere, and plenty of it is right-leaning. I am reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's mid-90's Enemies List, except that O'Rourke's seemed much more tongue-in-cheek, aware of the thorough naughtiness it was engaging in. A typical excerpt:

• Anyone who's last name is Cockburn.


• Anyone who has inherited so much money and so little sense that her last name might become Cockburn.


• Cockburn wanna-be Christopher Hitchens (Christ, who's checking the green cards around here?)

I know I'm hardly a neutral observer, and it's possible I'm not reading in the right places, but this level of vitriol really seems to be all the Left has. I'm not seeing a lot of "we should do this, instead." A few places, sure, but not the majority. The majority seem stuck in a bitter, I-despair-for-the-country malaise, so furious that the right exists and has influence that they don't know how to begin moving past them. And no, the Democrats Lobby Reform package doesn't cut it. It's so perfectly topical as to reflect strategery more than conviction, and of doubtful effectiveness anyway. But if they want to continue to be the Little Dutch Boys of the legal dyke betwixt politics and money, that's their headache. It's just not the kind of innovation that's going to put them in power again.

Santa Anna's Ghost Returns

Good news for those who worry about troubles on the U.S.-Mexico border leading to militarization of that border: it's already happening. Except the troops aren't ours.

It is fascinating that a man who has staked his presidency on American security is so willing to be blind regarding our own border. It would be one thing if Mexican authorities were crossing to capture criminals. We've done that, and I don't see that it would be bad to set up an agreement or three allotting those rights. But that isn't what's happening. They're crossing our border to aid and abett criminal activity. That's unacceptable, and if it continues, there will be an international incident. It's only a question of how soon, and how bloody, it will be.

The Last Mask Slips

Joel Stein finally lets the cat out of the bag regarding "Supporting the Troops."

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse.

Now he's not as extreme as he appears. He doesn't think they should get spat on and called babykillers. He supports giving them "hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return." But the logic of the all-volunteer military has finally caught up with the left. The I-word has come out. It'll be interesting to see what happens when this notion percolates with the Dem Underground and the Kossacks for a while. I mean, we all remember Ted Rall's sympathetic portrayal of the Pro-footballer who died in Afghanistan.

Greatest Songs #6:

Nirvana -- "All Apologies" (1993, from Unplugged in New York)

Two years ago, in its full-issue necrophilia for the decade anniversary of Kurt kissing his shotgun, Spin managed one moment that was an actual testament to Nirvana's music, rather than their pop culture status and image. In an alt-history timeline of what might have happened had Cobain been too stoned to pull the trigger, the author has Nirvana reform for November 2001's Concert for New York. The opening song to their set, is, of course, "All Apologies."

When all is said and done, it's that song and the obvious one that Nirvana is going to be remembered for, and it's the one that, if they're honest, the fans will admit to being superior. If, as Matt once told me, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is our generation's "Hard Day's Night," the song that captured a moment forever in crystal, then "All Apologies" is our "Comfortably Numb," the song that everyone sings to without knowing why.

I used the version of the song from Unplugged instead of In Utero for two reasons: 1) I don't have In Utero, and 2) this allows me to get in a last slap at all the self-important swine who screamed about Nirvana "selling out". Yeah, Kurt may have thought that Nevermind sounded like a Motely Crue record, but let's not forget that Kurt's perspective was, shall we say, a touch off at times. And if if Nevermind had been Nirvana's last album, maybe the argument would have some shred of merit (though I doubt it). But it wasn't. In Utero was, and it was by collective critical opinion the harsher, less commercial work. I don't know what you call that, but it's not selling out.

Unplugged, on the other hand, the live album everyone ran out and bought because it was released but a month or so after the Awful News, features the band sitting in front of a fawning, uncritical audience, playing the blues. You know, the blues? The oldest musical form in America? The ur-genre from which all others (except country, its kissin' cousin) are descended? The genre that was old before it started? Is there a more obvious way to cement your stature as Serious Musicians than to play blues progressions with a warbly voice?

I thought not. So where were the hipsters complaining about Unplugged?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to start. The album's brilliant, start to finish, and sweet and haunting and beautiful and deranged. It's a short history of popular music, where the Meat Puppets and David Bowie and Leadbelly share the same space, and done so well that we hardly notice the juxtaposition. Played the right way, "All Apologies" sounds like Robert Johnson, because "All Apologies" is Robert Johnson.

They never sold out. They just sold. There's a difference.






#7

And Another Traditional Pension Plan goes Kaput...

...this time it's IBM, who figures they can save $500 million a year by giving 401(k)'s to all their employees. Pretty soon, the only place in America that will have defined benefit pension plans is the U.S. Government. Too bad it isn't called that.

Get Up, Get, Get, Get Down, CFR is a Joke in Your Town...

Brian Anderson on Campaign Finance Reform, the Fairness Doctrine, and the Online Freedom of Speech Act. It's a mostly partisan affair, blaming Democrats and the Left for attempting to use regulation to silence New Media. But he makes one salient point:

In deciding two campaign-finance reform cases in the months ahead, the Roberts Court, one hopes, will show greater enthusiasm for First Amendment protection of political speech than did its predecessor, which should have shot down McCain-Feingold. If neither Congress nor the Supreme Court repeals this unconstitutional, un-American travesty, we can expect election regulations, in the grim words of Justice Antonin Scalia’s McConnell dissent, "to grow more voluminous, more detailed, and more complex in the years to come—and always, always, with the objective of reducing the excessive amount of speech." Thus will our most effective real protection against "the actuality and appearance of corruption"—the First Amendment itself—be nullified.

The boldface is my own. CFR stems from the desire to prevent plutocracy. In a mono-media world, that's a real threat. But the solution to monied interests buying public space was never restricting access, but increasing access. In a world where a web site can hold as much sway as a 30-second spot, which is the more cost-effective? The internet itself will eventually nullify the mesmeric power of TV to shape the terms of debate. Daily Kos and Instapundit are all the Campaign Finance Reform we'll ever need.

And that's the reason I will never vote for John McCain. I'll give my vote to the Libertarians before I assent to that Praetorian sitting in the Oval Office. I don't care if Hillary gets the job instead: she's McCain in heels and lipstick as far as I'm concerned. Perfect prima donnas of the political class, the pair of them.

Hysterical Blonde Joke

Yeah, we've all heard 'em, but this one really is the best.

The Following was Recently Overheard in the Senate:

Senator A: Would you rule against abortion?

Nominee: I don't think it's appropriate to answer those questions, as I might have to rule on them soon, and would prefer to approach the case freshly.

Senator A: When you were a lawyer, you argued against abortion.

Nominee: A lawyer's job is different from a judge's. I would do the job differently.

Senator A: I don't understand why you won't give me a straight answer.

Machine that Goes Ping: Ping!

Senator B: Would you rule against right-to-death statutes?

Nominee: Precedent has affirmed it. However, I would approach each case distinctly. There are many areas yet to be ironed out.

Senator B: I find your answers troubling, and so should the American people.

Machine that Goes Ping: Ping!

Senator C: I would just like to say blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blobbity bloobity bloo, blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah-blah-blah, blah blah blah blah-blah blah-blah blah blah I'm gonna be on television, I'm gonna be on television, blah blah blah blah-blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah-blah-blah, don't you think?

Nominee: Well...

Senator C: It's important to keep in mind that blah blah blah, blah bloobity bloobity bloo-blah, blah blobbity blobbity blobbity blah, blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah-blah blah, blah blah blah-blah-blah. So you understand our concern with these conflicting answers you're giving.

Machine that goes Ping: Ping!

Senator A: I want to subpoena something.

Chairman: Forget it.

Senator A: You suck.

Chairman: Your mom.

Machine that goes Ping: Ping!

Blah blah Washington blah blah sex blah blah gadgetry

P.J. delivers a gentle smack-down upon Wonkette's novel. Typical bon mots:

I won't spoil the plot. There isn't one

and

Cox has wit and sense. Occasionally she uses them.

I don't know what it is about Wankette that makes me want to so render her nom de plum, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that she herself represents what her novel appears to be about. Her blog is fun for a day or two until you realize that she doesn't have anything to say. It's all schoolgirl giggling and taking joy in the word "tits". Nothing wrong with that in small doses, but absent anything of greater substance it becomes as interesting as bathroom stall graffiti; if one didn't know otherwise, one would swear it was scripted. I can't be the only one who made the "how appropriate" eye-roll when I discovered that her last name was Cox.

I mean, really, what shocking about there being sex, betrayal, and the banally vicious rythmns of the Circle of Access in Washington? Is this really making the scales drop from anyone's eyes? What is this, the Fifties?

Steyn to Europe: You're DOOMED.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

Like anything else, survival is ultimately a choice. The body may will it, short-term, but it is the mind that must plan for it, long-term. Civilizations often die because they've succeeded for so long that they no longer think it requires work to do so.

Read the whole thing, as they say, but I'm suddenly applying this line of thinking to the much ballyhooed dearth of men in higher education. The so-called "War Against Boys" may be a factor, and the feminization of university culture as well, but ultimately, isn't it because boys are choosing not to succeed? And that we're letting them?

I'm a high school teacher: the curriculum is not that difficult. So what is it that's convinced large numbers of young men that education isn't worth it? Call me a crank, but I think it's the way that men have managed to convince themselves that ignorance is spiritual purity and decadence is manliness. I'm open to other suggestions as well.


UPDATE: Belmont Club has more, here and here, both of which aim towards the idea that the West has become a house divided against itself. It's citizenry still cling, if half-heartedly, to the old values, it's military, for the most part, stands firm, but its intellectual and political elite want nothing to do with mere survival. What Belmont Club doesn't say is what the Left wants: transcendence, of the idea of nation, of market, even of self, to attain a higher and better world. Yes, even at their most cynical and bigoted, that is what they want. They also are aware that violence oftimes begets violence. In fact, they are aware of it to such an acute degree that often that is all about violence that they know.

It should make anyone stand up and pay attention that the Military devotes such resources to "Information Operations." As Wretchard writes, we want the guys with guns to do their work and go. But if the elite fears the military, and the populace cherishes it, and this trend continues...well, I hear the Romans loved their freedom, too.

I suppose I should have mentioned...

...that I was taking my usual mid-terms/Christmas break, but I didn't. Mid-terms and Christmas happened before I could. But The Essayist is back for the new year, and we can expect exciting things to happen. Oh, yeah. Exciting things.