time for a proper fisking...

Here's the original, hat tip to RCP, which is of course where all of my information comes from. No, not really, but those guys do a bang up job and wow. Wouldn't have made it through the last election without RCP and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Haven't checked those in a while, but you know it probably isn't too good an idea to start looking at whether or not there's actually anyone placing bets on the 2008 election and if they are, where are you and did you go out tonight? But to the fisking of the original.

A less super, superpower?
--okay so this is the title, but honestly, isn't that something that Doctor Evil would say? "Oh yes Number Two, a less super, superpower, moohuahuahuaaa!" VDH just had an excellent article, Merchants of Despair which is really the reason why I feel the need to fisk this, who am I fisking, have to check, ah here it is, Johnathan Schell. Having read VDH's article I felt so, well the way you always feel when reading Victor Davis Hanson, alive and sure of yourself and proud of the accomplishments of Western civilization. Not that you don't feel that anyway, only it's much easier to believe in the vitality and the West's propensity for change and adapation when you see it put it so directly and proudly and without shame or remorse that you believe such things. It's a moving thing. So then I come across this thing today, this less super, superpower and I think to myself this is precisely the same kind of ho-hum the US is bound to screw up because, well, just because. And nanny nanny boo and then the tongue gets stuck out and we quickly regress to more primitive yet more honest ways of disagreeing. Which the fisk, though savage, is not really honest because hindsight is always 20/20--it's much easier to criticize than to originate, especially when you all the time in the world and they may have had a deadline.
I am never able to stay on just one thing, case ya hadn't noticed.
On with the first sentence....:


One of the most difficult things to judge in the world today is the extent of American power.


Okay. Apparently there many difficult things in the world that require us to pass judgment upon. I would be interested in knowing which of those are the "most" difficult to judge and which would fall into the "easiest"category. But that aside, really, that sentence pretty much sums up life for me. I mean, in any situation, it's difficult to gauge what the extent of anything is. We have much better information than we've had in the past, but we still only have a partial picture of what's actually going on in the world between all of it's six billion inhabitants. Or perhap even more. What' s going on in the world when you include the dolphins or the bacteria or even the virus and those plasmids...no...the prions, yes that's it...what then? Isn't it fair to say then that all actions and reactions are difficult experiences to judge and that only through experience and practice can we hope to make accurate judgments? So besides this sentence being generally true of all "things" that require human "judgment" what else is there I could possibly complain about in this sentence. The use of "extent"; for some reason I always think of extent as the apex, as the high water mark. A reporter might say, " The extent of the flooding yaddadada." It's just negative and meant to be negative.

On the one hand, there is no doubt that the United States possesses a far larger pile of weapons than any other country, that the American economy is also larger than any other country's and that America's movies and television programs are consumed globally. America is widely accorded the title "only superpower," and many of its detractors as well as its supporters describe it as the world's first truly globe-straddling empire.


Ah yes on the one hand. And on the other hand. Okay, so the US has a great big pile of weapons from which we merely randomly select, assign to the next soldier, chopper, boat, whatever form of transportation available and say here ya go, go blow something up you crazy fool you! Big pile of weapons. Just sitting out in Montana. At least five miles long and I dunno, ten stories high. All sorts of weapons. Machine guns, machetes, roman candles (just to annoy), grenades, tanks, planes, bombs, missiles, and so on and so forth. On the hand on the other hand, it's just not true that we have a larger "pile" of weapons. We actually have a relatively small military compared to the offical sizes of many of our potential enemies and actual adversaries. As a percentage of GDP what we spend on the military compared to Social Security and Medicare is teeny teeny tiny. Maybe a full 5% of GDP on the military if you count all the extra expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan over the past couple of years. Our military is so awesome because it's a volunteer force backed up with superior technology, tactics and training. Not because of some pile of weapons. Yeah yeah, largest economy, uh huh, she likes that. And remember there, not just American's movies and TV, but our music, our literature, our science (who has won most of the Nobel Prizes of the sciences in the past century, hmmmm?), our ideas, our politics, our clothing, why, pretty much the whole of our culture is out there competing for everyone's attention. And it's working....the whole tone of this little bit is condescending. I mean describing us as the world first globe straddling "empire" is a bit much. All this talk of Empire and I can't even get some kind of Imperial commission to go and administrate some far flung colony and teach them English and our common law traditions...somehow that just doesn't fit with Empire. If we are an Empire, we're the first Empire of Freedom, not an Empire in the traditional sense, because we have brought more liberty to more people than anyone will probably ever bring to any segment of humanity at any point in the near to relatively distant future.

Cigarette break. (soft elavator music, daraatata, daratataata, rarararataa!)

On the other hand, it is not yet clear what the United States can accomplish with these eye-catching assets. For power, as Thomas Hobbes wrote in one of the most succinct and durable definitions of power ever offered, is a "present means, to obtain some future apparent good." Power, after all, is not just an expenditure of energy. There must be results.

I'm trying not to go and smoke another cigarette. I know that's a bad way to handle stress. But right now I don't really see that I have another option. Perhaps a drink of some cool refreshing water. Ahhhh. Here's the other hand. I'm having a hard time not seeing what the US can accomplish with our stylish and trendsetting assets. Iraqis voting. Lebanese peacefully revolting. The people in Krygihoweveryouspellitstan and Tajikstand are also taking to the streets to protest the rigging of their elections. The Ukraine. I dunno. Seems like results to me. Seems like we're going to be obtaining some "future apparent good" which would be liberalizing the Middle East and bringing modernity to the doorsteps of the evildoers. Seems like results to me.

And that's just the first paragraph. More to come later.
Just remember, everything is a work in progress.