That's Twelfth Night. Very good Chuck.
Ahem, sorry.
The clarity of purpose that I was assumed drove all great people is completely obfuscated in my mind. How best to hasten the death blow to the Democrats? Is that really what we need since they seem to be doing a fine job of making themselves irrelevant? Is a bloated majority government that is indeed only a conservative one (it's important to consult Friedrich Hayek at the end of "The Constitution of Liberty" to see his excellent postscript entitled, "Why I am not a conservative to understand what I am going to talk about it; in it, Hayek argues that the European scheme of conservative versus liberal has been but merely exported in name only to the US; what we have are conservatives and socialists. I am a liberal. There is nothing about American civilization that I wish to conserve. I want to use the amendment process for radical change, I believe in the absorption of foreign nation-states, and the expansion into the Solar System. There is nothing conservative about what I believe except my belief in the rule of law, representative, limited and constitutional government, and the market economy; but that isn't to say that I don't think that we can't improve upon those concepts, it only means that I think it's a safe bet to stick with those ideas because they have gotten us this far and until we figure out something better we had better to adhere to a few guidelines. Charles Schumer and Rangel and for that part most of the House Democratic caucus and a significant portion of the Senate are indeed socialists. They don't even understand that they are indeed socialists, most of them at least, and those that do would never openly admit it. A terrible game of hide and seek is being played out across America and the Left needs to come clean. But enough with that) is that a government that we would want...phew...
No, but really, can't the "conservatives" govern with the realization that change is going to happen and that we've got to foster that change, to nurture it, to provide it the fertile soil it needs to grow in? Can we integrate India fully into the Anglosphere? Can we Anglosize Iraq and Afghanistan to a substantial degree that they become the Germany and the South Korea of the Cold War, with India as the Japan and Australia as the 51st, 52nd and however many other states that they have? Can we beat the Chinese?
And so much of this falls back to whether or not the Left can be exposed as what it is to the vast majority of the American public so that it completely loses all trust in the Left and the Democrats, the oldest political party on the planet, go the way of the Whigs and the Federalists and the Soviets...into the ash heap of history. That will of course split the majority party into the Conservative Party and a purified Republican/Liberal Party that will retake the liberal mantra and make the socialists completely irrelevant.
Here's a proposition I have that will split the Left: universal health care vouchers for universal school vouchers. An even swap. Through a process of indexing and massive statistical calculations, we could arrive at an approximate amount your healthcare will cost over the course of your life. Simply by filling in all the blanks: ethnicity, health history, family health history, etc. A long time ago I pointed out that there is nothing more insane than paying someone to pay someone else. I went to the doctor to get my fingernail drained, I had slammed it in the door. I waited for more than an hour, and then, they took me back and weighed me and took my bloodpressure. Now, I know that's just standard procedure, but then I sat in the room for thirty more minutes and then a nurse came in and said, Mr Maley, let's go get your X-rays and I said, I didn't request any X-rays.
The arrogance of it all. Oh, he doesn't want any x-rays she said, loudly back to the room. I said no, I explained to the front desk lady that all I wanted was to have some holes drilled in my nail to realize this blood please!
Fifteen more minutes.
Finally, the doctor comes in, has me lay down and drills two little holes into my fingernail. Time to completion: thirty seconds. Time to relief, as soon as the blood started flowing.
And then I sat there another fifteen minutes. But hey, I say to myself, echoing Jonah's thoughts from the other day, at least if feels better.
As I exit I find that despite having told the front desk lady she is about to charge me for the x-ray that I did not want and did not have. Still, the bill came to around $170. I said, you've got to be kidding me. Am I paying to sit around? For the two hours that I was here that $170 would have paid both the front desk ladies, the nurse who weighed me and took my bloodpressure, and let's get a little more specific. Let's say that both front desk ladies make $20 an hour, so that's $80, and the nurse makes $30 an hour, so that's $60, for the two hours I was there my $170 would have paid there salaries...is that how they arrive at the number? Because the only thing I should have paid for was the doctor drilling into my fingernail, at most, at the most, I would have been under normal market circumstances paid no more than $40 TO THE DOCTOR BECAUSE HE'S THE ONE WHO IS DOING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let's pick a comparitive situation: you get a nail stuck in your tire. You arrive at the tire place and you're told what they have available and then you tell them it's just a nail and they say well, we can't do it right and you say, fine, I'll go somewhere ELSE and they say, ok, ok, and fifteen minutes later your tire is patched and away you go and it didn't cost you anymore than $40.
The problem is that we view all healthcare expenditures as costs. We don't view them as investments. And consequently every health decision is made based on how much the procedure will costs instead of how much we're investing in the productivity of a person, in their happiness, in their contentment, in their lifelong Gross Self Product and how much that contributes to our nation-states Gross Domestic Product. If we viewed such things as investments then every company would have mandatory exercise regimens: a fit employee is a healthy employee is an employee that's investing in their health and saving the company money in the long-term because most old age diseases can be mitigated substantially through healthy living and we simply don't offer people any immediate compensation for such prudent behavior. Imagine that we issued everyone a booklet of healthcare vouchers, each one equal to a set amount, and each one redeemable through either a private/public institution such as the Federal Reserve, or through a private consortium monitored by a government agency. These vouchers would be available through means-testing or by purchasing a health-savings account (instead of health insurance, to encourage the formation of capital) with a certified voucher accepting company. The incentive would be to SAVE your vouchers and view each doctors' as means of prevention not active care. We have come to view doctors as the ones who can solve all of our biochemical problems; somehow the human race survived without taking your child to the doctor for every cold, bump, bruise, or yourself for every ache, or pain, we have got to find ways to improve our health without relying soley on healthcare professionals. This would have the effect of flattening the market, providers would have an added incentive to actually treat patients quickly because the neutral value of the vouchers and because people would be free to choose ANY doctor.
This deal would have the added benefit of destroying the public school system and allowing choice and competition to enter there too and the argument on the left that nobody has access to healthcare blah blah would be completed mitigated.
A win win.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
incrementalism; the only way
I have just reread Jonah Goldberg at NRO and I'm thinking about stopping to read it again.
Okay.
The first thing I want to point out is that there seems to be this depressing melancholy surrounding the right side of the 'Sphere, this attitude, well, this is the best that we can hope for.
Tish, pushaw and nonsense! The elections of 2006 are but a year and a little ways away--nothing we can do about the fact that the conservative movement, the movement that put the GOP into power? Nothing you say?
If the Republican Congress does not have the legislative cojones to simply cut all spending except for the war effort and maybe SocSec and maybe Medicaid with the prescription drug plan ended down by WHATEVER PERCENTAGE necessary to balance the budget then we should punish them. We may think that the GOP Congress is better than an a Democratic Congress but I promise you that the idea of the Dem's running the Houses scares the jeepers out of the GOP a lot more than we are scared of it. We should put the fear of God into our elected representatives to do what we elected them to do, not to just shore up the beast, as Jonah puts it. Succumbing to the sublime notion of "it's out of my hands" is not the way to approach this problem. Doing something about it is.
For the past week or so, the Porkbusters movement has begun to gather, well, it has begun to gather. And some have made some significant theoretical progress (follow the link and the play the game, it's fun!) but nothing concrete. A while back I floated the idea that bloggers should take the government to task using the sunshine laws to force every government bureaucracy to open its books to outside analysis. That's still not a bad idea, but as not so bad ideas go, there are significant logistical hurdles to clear, as with the extension of that idea, that a consortium of bloggers unite to take the GOP to task for failing to live up to it's constituents.
Now, to see an example of such a consortium all you have to do is look at the evangelicals. Look at these highly intelligent, highly capable individuals who spend a significant amount of time devoted to something that just isn't going to change anything within our political process. For people like me, who sees no difference between religion and ideology, I see that effort as nothing more than wasted. All you have to do is look at what drives most of the conflicts on the planet and realize that even the past century's horrific violence was a direct result of people holding a belief system to be more important than the world around them.
Now, the question facing bloggers, after the mild successes of the past: the Eason Jordan scandal and resignation, calling Rather's bluff, helping to overcome the inherent bias of the MSM, what can we accomplish together? But more importantly, we, as members of the conservative, libertarian, traditionalist movement, have to realize that while we think we know how to solve our problems as a nation-state, we cannot accomplish it in a day, or in one administration, or in one decade. The Left understood intuitively and overtly that they would never be able to get their ultimate agenda imposed upon the country. They understood that they only way to hoodwink people was to propose gradual changes that would eventually lead to the oligarchy that we now possess; and to deny that we are an oligarchy is to deny the nature of the beast. What we must do is begin the gradual, generation long effort to dismantle this oligarchy piece, by piece. We must have a comprehensive agenda, and we must come together as a community to devise what that agenda must be. The parties cannot be changed from within. Look at how being the majority has made the Republicans essentially the Democrats. Nothing really has changed, except in the prosecution of the war effort and some adjustments to our Byzantine tax code and some new free trade agreements. Other than that, this administration has been the 21st century's LBJ. There can be no disputing it. We can only hope to force the GOP leadership to recognize the value of our efforts by ourselves recognizing that we can no more be pawns to them than they are to us. It's a two way street, everything is a trade-off. They don't want to cut spending on all non-defense related spending by whatever percentage necessary to balance the budget, tomorrow? Than we as a movement withdraw our support from the GOP and split the ticket by voting for either independents, libertarians, greens, or no one. They want to be the majority party, fine by us, then they had better start acting like it. If, as Jonah puts it, moderate Republicans are responsible Democrats, than we had better start thinking of how to bring more conservative Republicans into leadership posts and taking the hits if necessary to get rid of the RINO's. I'd rather have a conservative Democrat in a Senate seat than a RINO anyday of the week.
The first step toward realizing that we must strive for incrementalism is that we must prioritize. What can we do now to change things best for the long term, what policy options are most important to us? What laws or constitutional amenments should we support that can begin to unravel the oligarchy? I think the first is obvious: we must break the back of K street and we must go to back to a time when an individual could contribute as much as he or she wanted to a political party, while simultaneously banning all contributions from entities other than individuals. Why do we allow corporate entities, labor unions, etc., to lobby the government? Why do we allow them to contribute money to political parties? Individuals are the backbone of the political process, not the pinky dammit! The only way to break the back of K street is to repeal the 16th amendment, otherwise, we'll end up with something like the FairTax and an income tax and then we'll be really screwed.
So, objective number one: repealing the 16th amendment. How many states do we need to pass a constitutional amendment, three fourths if I remember correctly. How many states in the union would be able to pass an amendment repealing the 16th? How many of those states is support guaranteed? We must take a strategic and tactical outlook on the situation. If repeal is not possible immediately, settle for the repeal of the current code and the institution of a consumption tax.
Objective number two: repeal all campaign finance restrictions, let the money go to the parties. One the reasons that the Democrats have become so weakened is that they are nothing more than a song and dance show, they are the real power on the Left. The power on the Left resides in the myriad of alphabet soup interest groups who can see past their sprout salad to realize that they have turned themselves into a generation of political weaklings. Wealthy individuals control the Left, and the Left purports to be for the common man. It really is funny, but the same thing has happened to a lesser degree on the right. There the alphabet soup interest groups can't see past the Constitution on their desks to realize that the destruction of that document did not happen overnight. Only individuals vote, so only individuals can contribute.
Objective number three: Find a better way to handle appropriations. Clearly the current committee system just isn't working with regard to appropriations and legislation in general. A general change in rules would probably be easiest, something along the lines of, ahem, this is really a crazy idea people: a bill shall only contain language pertaining to the subject matter of the bill. No amendments. No mechanism for pork to just appear.
Objective Number Four: Out and oust the RINO's. Better to be the minortiy party with people who actually share beliefs rather than a majority party cobbled together out of various factions and special interest groups. An effective, principled minority can often be more a boon for the population than a hobbled, bloated majority that simply does what everyone wants, spend money!
Objective Number Five: Become proactive. We need a blogging clearinghouse of activities that need to be completed. This congressman hasn't received his daily allotment of mail, this federal agency has yet to be audited, so on and so forth. We need to stop sitting around reading the news and go out there and make the news. That's why the whole MSM is collapsing in around itself and why people like me have turned off the TV, stopped reading the major papers, and turned to the sphere for virtually all of my information. People have started to realize that journalists are not just not indepedent story tellers, they make events happen because they aren't reporting, they're investigating, and investigations always lead to some kind of series of events. We need to put a stop to the idea right now of citizen journalists and brand ourselves as citizen investigators who will no longer tolerate corruption, ineffeciency, and bloated and unnecessary bureaucracies that do not support the public good.
So stop moping Jonah, and go do something about it!
Okay.
The first thing I want to point out is that there seems to be this depressing melancholy surrounding the right side of the 'Sphere, this attitude, well, this is the best that we can hope for.
Tish, pushaw and nonsense! The elections of 2006 are but a year and a little ways away--nothing we can do about the fact that the conservative movement, the movement that put the GOP into power? Nothing you say?
If the Republican Congress does not have the legislative cojones to simply cut all spending except for the war effort and maybe SocSec and maybe Medicaid with the prescription drug plan ended down by WHATEVER PERCENTAGE necessary to balance the budget then we should punish them. We may think that the GOP Congress is better than an a Democratic Congress but I promise you that the idea of the Dem's running the Houses scares the jeepers out of the GOP a lot more than we are scared of it. We should put the fear of God into our elected representatives to do what we elected them to do, not to just shore up the beast, as Jonah puts it. Succumbing to the sublime notion of "it's out of my hands" is not the way to approach this problem. Doing something about it is.
For the past week or so, the Porkbusters movement has begun to gather, well, it has begun to gather. And some have made some significant theoretical progress (follow the link and the play the game, it's fun!) but nothing concrete. A while back I floated the idea that bloggers should take the government to task using the sunshine laws to force every government bureaucracy to open its books to outside analysis. That's still not a bad idea, but as not so bad ideas go, there are significant logistical hurdles to clear, as with the extension of that idea, that a consortium of bloggers unite to take the GOP to task for failing to live up to it's constituents.
Now, to see an example of such a consortium all you have to do is look at the evangelicals. Look at these highly intelligent, highly capable individuals who spend a significant amount of time devoted to something that just isn't going to change anything within our political process. For people like me, who sees no difference between religion and ideology, I see that effort as nothing more than wasted. All you have to do is look at what drives most of the conflicts on the planet and realize that even the past century's horrific violence was a direct result of people holding a belief system to be more important than the world around them.
Now, the question facing bloggers, after the mild successes of the past: the Eason Jordan scandal and resignation, calling Rather's bluff, helping to overcome the inherent bias of the MSM, what can we accomplish together? But more importantly, we, as members of the conservative, libertarian, traditionalist movement, have to realize that while we think we know how to solve our problems as a nation-state, we cannot accomplish it in a day, or in one administration, or in one decade. The Left understood intuitively and overtly that they would never be able to get their ultimate agenda imposed upon the country. They understood that they only way to hoodwink people was to propose gradual changes that would eventually lead to the oligarchy that we now possess; and to deny that we are an oligarchy is to deny the nature of the beast. What we must do is begin the gradual, generation long effort to dismantle this oligarchy piece, by piece. We must have a comprehensive agenda, and we must come together as a community to devise what that agenda must be. The parties cannot be changed from within. Look at how being the majority has made the Republicans essentially the Democrats. Nothing really has changed, except in the prosecution of the war effort and some adjustments to our Byzantine tax code and some new free trade agreements. Other than that, this administration has been the 21st century's LBJ. There can be no disputing it. We can only hope to force the GOP leadership to recognize the value of our efforts by ourselves recognizing that we can no more be pawns to them than they are to us. It's a two way street, everything is a trade-off. They don't want to cut spending on all non-defense related spending by whatever percentage necessary to balance the budget, tomorrow? Than we as a movement withdraw our support from the GOP and split the ticket by voting for either independents, libertarians, greens, or no one. They want to be the majority party, fine by us, then they had better start acting like it. If, as Jonah puts it, moderate Republicans are responsible Democrats, than we had better start thinking of how to bring more conservative Republicans into leadership posts and taking the hits if necessary to get rid of the RINO's. I'd rather have a conservative Democrat in a Senate seat than a RINO anyday of the week.
The first step toward realizing that we must strive for incrementalism is that we must prioritize. What can we do now to change things best for the long term, what policy options are most important to us? What laws or constitutional amenments should we support that can begin to unravel the oligarchy? I think the first is obvious: we must break the back of K street and we must go to back to a time when an individual could contribute as much as he or she wanted to a political party, while simultaneously banning all contributions from entities other than individuals. Why do we allow corporate entities, labor unions, etc., to lobby the government? Why do we allow them to contribute money to political parties? Individuals are the backbone of the political process, not the pinky dammit! The only way to break the back of K street is to repeal the 16th amendment, otherwise, we'll end up with something like the FairTax and an income tax and then we'll be really screwed.
So, objective number one: repealing the 16th amendment. How many states do we need to pass a constitutional amendment, three fourths if I remember correctly. How many states in the union would be able to pass an amendment repealing the 16th? How many of those states is support guaranteed? We must take a strategic and tactical outlook on the situation. If repeal is not possible immediately, settle for the repeal of the current code and the institution of a consumption tax.
Objective number two: repeal all campaign finance restrictions, let the money go to the parties. One the reasons that the Democrats have become so weakened is that they are nothing more than a song and dance show, they are the real power on the Left. The power on the Left resides in the myriad of alphabet soup interest groups who can see past their sprout salad to realize that they have turned themselves into a generation of political weaklings. Wealthy individuals control the Left, and the Left purports to be for the common man. It really is funny, but the same thing has happened to a lesser degree on the right. There the alphabet soup interest groups can't see past the Constitution on their desks to realize that the destruction of that document did not happen overnight. Only individuals vote, so only individuals can contribute.
Objective number three: Find a better way to handle appropriations. Clearly the current committee system just isn't working with regard to appropriations and legislation in general. A general change in rules would probably be easiest, something along the lines of, ahem, this is really a crazy idea people: a bill shall only contain language pertaining to the subject matter of the bill. No amendments. No mechanism for pork to just appear.
Objective Number Four: Out and oust the RINO's. Better to be the minortiy party with people who actually share beliefs rather than a majority party cobbled together out of various factions and special interest groups. An effective, principled minority can often be more a boon for the population than a hobbled, bloated majority that simply does what everyone wants, spend money!
Objective Number Five: Become proactive. We need a blogging clearinghouse of activities that need to be completed. This congressman hasn't received his daily allotment of mail, this federal agency has yet to be audited, so on and so forth. We need to stop sitting around reading the news and go out there and make the news. That's why the whole MSM is collapsing in around itself and why people like me have turned off the TV, stopped reading the major papers, and turned to the sphere for virtually all of my information. People have started to realize that journalists are not just not indepedent story tellers, they make events happen because they aren't reporting, they're investigating, and investigations always lead to some kind of series of events. We need to put a stop to the idea right now of citizen journalists and brand ourselves as citizen investigators who will no longer tolerate corruption, ineffeciency, and bloated and unnecessary bureaucracies that do not support the public good.
So stop moping Jonah, and go do something about it!
Saturday, September 24, 2005
a long time ago, in a post far far away
I talked about the divide between Red and Blue State America. I'd be interested to see if anyone has put together any data concerning where the money for the relief effort came from, and whether or not there's a connection between current charity efforts and past data, and whether or not my guess, that Red State America gave either a greater average individual amount per capita or a larger nominal amount altogether. Just a side thought.
As an almost unwilling member of the Republican coalition, I remind myself every day that all choices ultimately are bad choices. Even two great choices may pale in comparison to an opportunity that will present itself at the next moment, one that you will no longer be able act upon because of your previous choice. And right now, as there pretty much always has been in American history, we have two choices. The Republicans or the Democrats. That's the way it's been since the Civil War, and no matter how much the various third-parties (look at the way we turn that into a plural) want to believe they are having an impact, that's pretty much the way that it will always be. Not much that can be done about it, accept it and move on.
However, I saw something interesting on Instapundit from one of his readers:
uhm. I can't quite seem how to figure to paste anything right now. I'll come back to it. But the readers message essentially argued whether or not a Republican minority might have more success reducing Democratic spending than a majority unable to contain itself. I myself had convinced myself that the GOP needed only to get into office and undue the damage done to federalism through inept and excessive government spending...alas, that has not yet come to pass. And of course, what it means is that the parties are merely a symptom of the problem, not the ultimate cause. I could easily pass blame on K-street, which is very very easy, but again, they are merely symptoms of the problem. Malpractice lawsuits, government unions, an unnecessarily complex and convoluted federal code, blah blah blah. We have more problems than anyone can name, and we have more problems than really, honestly, can ever be fixed.
Unless of course....
Think of this: if a law does not have an expiration date, or, if no law has been passed to alter it, than that law is on the books. Part of the whole common law tradition, of recognizing that we stand on the shoulders of giants and maybe we should trust our forebears intuitions more than our own, and partly because nobody really cares that it's illegal to have wear your hat sideways walking down the street backwards playing "oh my darlin clementine" or that you can beat your wife on the steps of the courthouse for one minute at midnight without fear of recrimination. Honestly. Solution? It's time to use the amendment process of the Constitution...oh wait, that's not going to happen either...sigh.
Forcing all legislation to be temporary would lead to the immediate removal of thousands of pages of ridiculous regulations that right now are just about as stupid as the Left is behaving. Again, both symptoms, not the cause.
So why are divided by politics? Why have we literally became to separate, self-contained worlds? I can't think about it now. It's hurting my head.
As an almost unwilling member of the Republican coalition, I remind myself every day that all choices ultimately are bad choices. Even two great choices may pale in comparison to an opportunity that will present itself at the next moment, one that you will no longer be able act upon because of your previous choice. And right now, as there pretty much always has been in American history, we have two choices. The Republicans or the Democrats. That's the way it's been since the Civil War, and no matter how much the various third-parties (look at the way we turn that into a plural) want to believe they are having an impact, that's pretty much the way that it will always be. Not much that can be done about it, accept it and move on.
However, I saw something interesting on Instapundit from one of his readers:
uhm. I can't quite seem how to figure to paste anything right now. I'll come back to it. But the readers message essentially argued whether or not a Republican minority might have more success reducing Democratic spending than a majority unable to contain itself. I myself had convinced myself that the GOP needed only to get into office and undue the damage done to federalism through inept and excessive government spending...alas, that has not yet come to pass. And of course, what it means is that the parties are merely a symptom of the problem, not the ultimate cause. I could easily pass blame on K-street, which is very very easy, but again, they are merely symptoms of the problem. Malpractice lawsuits, government unions, an unnecessarily complex and convoluted federal code, blah blah blah. We have more problems than anyone can name, and we have more problems than really, honestly, can ever be fixed.
Unless of course....
Think of this: if a law does not have an expiration date, or, if no law has been passed to alter it, than that law is on the books. Part of the whole common law tradition, of recognizing that we stand on the shoulders of giants and maybe we should trust our forebears intuitions more than our own, and partly because nobody really cares that it's illegal to have wear your hat sideways walking down the street backwards playing "oh my darlin clementine" or that you can beat your wife on the steps of the courthouse for one minute at midnight without fear of recrimination. Honestly. Solution? It's time to use the amendment process of the Constitution...oh wait, that's not going to happen either...sigh.
Forcing all legislation to be temporary would lead to the immediate removal of thousands of pages of ridiculous regulations that right now are just about as stupid as the Left is behaving. Again, both symptoms, not the cause.
So why are divided by politics? Why have we literally became to separate, self-contained worlds? I can't think about it now. It's hurting my head.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
an Italian from Brooklyn...
During World War II, 2 percent of Americans lived in Brooklyn, and if read the whole little bit and down a bit below my bit that I'm quoting, you'll see that that urban megapolis that stretches from New York down through Jersey and Connecticut and Pennsylvania still to this day contains 6 percent of our population. Now, I'm not trying to quote Barone word for word, who better to quote word for word if I were to actually do so, but my point is that a lot of people live in that great big giant urban insanity in what I like to call, that place way up there North that unless I one day have to play a show there I never intend to visit.
But honestly I think that we need is someone who can take the experience of having lived, managed, directed, improved, and even surpassed what any of thought possible in that vast urban tract and through whatever means necessary, elect him President in 2008.
I'm talking about Rudolph Guiliani, an Italian from Brooklyn, and I can hardly believe that we have to wait three and half more years until he's the next President, along with Condi as his VP.
Sigh.
Until that time though, it's time for Karl Rove to get his head out of ass and for Dubya to forget about every appealing to the Left side of the aisle and focus on what we thought this Presidency was about: winning the war against the Islamofascists. I don't understand why nobody else has noticed that George's domestic policy successes came only when he was putting pressure on the enemy. Instead, we have come to this strange equilibrium of virtually inviting the Islamofascists into Iraq to do battle with them there instead of continuing to push the fight against them. Dubya still wants private social security accounts and genuine tax reform? He better get out there and starting kicking some serious ass, and the way that I see it, there's only two options remaining:
1. Cordon the borders of Syria and Iran off and begin a massive troop build-up on both sides. Let the Iranians and the Syrians make of it what they will but only say that the added troops are there to protect the territorial integrity of Iraq. Do we not have a shred of capacity for subterfuge and counterintelligence operations? Sheesh.
2. Bomb the hell out of Sryia and overthrow Assad's regime. Let the Iranians make of it what they will, especially since they'll realize....Israel now has a direct flight path to Iran. Hmmmm.
There are only three, no, four options remaining! The four options remaing to us are...(if you didn't get that...I don't know what to do say)
With Syria out of the way all of the sudden the shining light of truth will now be solidly fixed on the location that has spawned this evil: Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabit interlocutors know that they are not the true heirs of Islam and that if the rest of the Islamic world knew the full truth about their hedonistic activities, the sickness of their massive welfare state, and their inability to stem the flow of billions of dollar to the worldwide network of madrassas means that a realpolitik situation exists. A situation that must be exploited.
The Iranians believe they are the rightful heirs of the Islamic culture, fine whatever. They can believe that they are the heirs to the Zoroastrians for all I care. What I do care about is that the Iranians can potentially be turned into allies, especially given the unstable status of Pakistan and the fact that there will be a democratic Iraq sitting on Iran's borders. Removing the Syrians from the equation will only put the pressure directly on the Iranian government, which is caught in the middle of what they perceive as a lethal situation: they are surrounded by nuclear powers. Pakistan, a Sunni majority state, India, a secular though largely Hindu state, Russia, a secular but largely Christian state, and Iraq, a secular though currently under our protection state. Everywhere the Iranians leaders look, they see states with nuclear weapons. Well, why can't we have one? they whine. Boo hoo.
Big ideas people. You can't win if you don't play. We need to develop the ability to place human intelligence into every country and be able to direct covert activities that can change the tide from within. Even if a democratically elected government of Iran isn't the best of friends with everyone else, we might be able to offer them say, a nuclear security guarantee so long as they don't develop nuclear weapons. Nothing scares the hell out of non-nuclear armed states more than saber rattling from nuclear armed states, that is, unless they're backed up by the US. Look at the security relationship between the US and Japan. They make cheap consumer electronics and we protect them with nuclear weapons. Great isn't it?
Big ideas, I'll say it again. We need to see more than just the picture. We need to realize that there is a big picture. And most people just haven't even thought about it. They don't care. They're big idea is trying out one of Rachel Ray's new recipes. I swear to you that woman's smile is not natural. No one should be able to smile from one side of the face to the other and have it appear that her teeth stretch the same distance. It just freaks me out. And the nation loves her. Wow, I am so out of the loop.
But honestly I think that we need is someone who can take the experience of having lived, managed, directed, improved, and even surpassed what any of thought possible in that vast urban tract and through whatever means necessary, elect him President in 2008.
I'm talking about Rudolph Guiliani, an Italian from Brooklyn, and I can hardly believe that we have to wait three and half more years until he's the next President, along with Condi as his VP.
Sigh.
Until that time though, it's time for Karl Rove to get his head out of ass and for Dubya to forget about every appealing to the Left side of the aisle and focus on what we thought this Presidency was about: winning the war against the Islamofascists. I don't understand why nobody else has noticed that George's domestic policy successes came only when he was putting pressure on the enemy. Instead, we have come to this strange equilibrium of virtually inviting the Islamofascists into Iraq to do battle with them there instead of continuing to push the fight against them. Dubya still wants private social security accounts and genuine tax reform? He better get out there and starting kicking some serious ass, and the way that I see it, there's only two options remaining:
1. Cordon the borders of Syria and Iran off and begin a massive troop build-up on both sides. Let the Iranians and the Syrians make of it what they will but only say that the added troops are there to protect the territorial integrity of Iraq. Do we not have a shred of capacity for subterfuge and counterintelligence operations? Sheesh.
2. Bomb the hell out of Sryia and overthrow Assad's regime. Let the Iranians make of it what they will, especially since they'll realize....Israel now has a direct flight path to Iran. Hmmmm.
There are only three, no, four options remaining! The four options remaing to us are...(if you didn't get that...I don't know what to do say)
With Syria out of the way all of the sudden the shining light of truth will now be solidly fixed on the location that has spawned this evil: Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabit interlocutors know that they are not the true heirs of Islam and that if the rest of the Islamic world knew the full truth about their hedonistic activities, the sickness of their massive welfare state, and their inability to stem the flow of billions of dollar to the worldwide network of madrassas means that a realpolitik situation exists. A situation that must be exploited.
The Iranians believe they are the rightful heirs of the Islamic culture, fine whatever. They can believe that they are the heirs to the Zoroastrians for all I care. What I do care about is that the Iranians can potentially be turned into allies, especially given the unstable status of Pakistan and the fact that there will be a democratic Iraq sitting on Iran's borders. Removing the Syrians from the equation will only put the pressure directly on the Iranian government, which is caught in the middle of what they perceive as a lethal situation: they are surrounded by nuclear powers. Pakistan, a Sunni majority state, India, a secular though largely Hindu state, Russia, a secular but largely Christian state, and Iraq, a secular though currently under our protection state. Everywhere the Iranians leaders look, they see states with nuclear weapons. Well, why can't we have one? they whine. Boo hoo.
Big ideas people. You can't win if you don't play. We need to develop the ability to place human intelligence into every country and be able to direct covert activities that can change the tide from within. Even if a democratically elected government of Iran isn't the best of friends with everyone else, we might be able to offer them say, a nuclear security guarantee so long as they don't develop nuclear weapons. Nothing scares the hell out of non-nuclear armed states more than saber rattling from nuclear armed states, that is, unless they're backed up by the US. Look at the security relationship between the US and Japan. They make cheap consumer electronics and we protect them with nuclear weapons. Great isn't it?
Big ideas, I'll say it again. We need to see more than just the picture. We need to realize that there is a big picture. And most people just haven't even thought about it. They don't care. They're big idea is trying out one of Rachel Ray's new recipes. I swear to you that woman's smile is not natural. No one should be able to smile from one side of the face to the other and have it appear that her teeth stretch the same distance. It just freaks me out. And the nation loves her. Wow, I am so out of the loop.
Monday, September 19, 2005
we need big ideas and we need them fast...
Ultimately this is a really boring time to live in. I mean that. For the vast majority of the citizens of what remains of the West, while life may not be easy, it certainly is no longer a struggle. Instead of worrying about what we're going to have for dinner, we worry about what we shouldn't have dinner. Interesting turnabout there. Wasn't too long ago that most people worried about what would be dinner, not whether what they were eating was a nutritionally sound meal. What's next, the unbearable thought of life without Dr. Scholls? People standing in sovietesque lines to make sure they get the new Mach 5 from Gillette?
But of course, nothing much changes about nothing. And ultimately we're content with that, because so far what has only sort of kind of worked has sort of kind of worked and after all, that's better than most of human history when even the things that sort of kind of worked weren't really working at all, and if they were working, it was because you had fixed them, defended it from wandering barbarians or tribes or nature...because order had been brought from chaos.
Trouble with bringing order to chaos is that no matter how hard you try, the laws of thermodynamics will stop you. Every change affects another, and before you know it, you've upended the entire social order and now you can't even read the street signs in your hometown because they've been printed in Terroc, the new language of the continental empire which once was the western hemisphere. Stranger things have happened.
I must admit that I have personally always longed for an American empire. I remember being sorely disappointed that we didn't engage the Soviets after World War II, that MacArthur was pulled from combat by Truman, that Kennedy didn't just nuke the bastards into oblivion, and that Reagan didn't give ole Gorbie one right where it counted. So many missed opportunites. That we didn't simply make Mexico part of the United States during the Mexican-American war, that we never managed to peel off most of Canada, that the nation's the Caribbean aren't states, the central American states, the Phillipines, Japan, Germany, the list goes on and on. Of course, I can hear now the quotes that will be selected from this blog twenty years from now proving that I am militant fascist hellbent on world dominiation.
Quite the contrary, I'm merely hellbent on getting as many people to agree that the rule of law, the market economy and representative, limited, constitutional government is the only way to go. And if that means absorbing nations into the United States than so much the better--why, we have the only built-in mechanism for doing so of any nation; within the Constitution itself are instructions on how to add new states to the Union.
Instead, we limited ourselves to this little expanse of the Western hemisphere, one nation under Canada and above Mexico with that piece of Alaska and Hawaii and some other random places throughout the Pacific and Atlantic that are ours...but noooooooo....instead, we've got all this bullshit going on and no big ideas.
A few years ago I came up with the idea of Anti-Terrorist Treaty Organizations; ATTO's. I now think that's a mistake. While the threat of Islamofascists is immense, they are quickly being relegated to the ash heap of history, or at least, everyone who wants to fight us in open combat is. Meanwhile, the shadowy elements of the post-Jihad are beginning to come to light. And the light is not looking very pretty.
-A weakened and strategically impotent western continental europe and a resurgent, patriotic eastern europe find themselves at each other's throats concerning the fate of the EU and it's constitution--only Britains emerges unscathed and still a global power.
-Virtually every Sunni Muslim shamed into obseqious deferrence to the demographic reality concerning their religion: there are simply a lot more Shiites than Sunnies. That almost sounds like the ending to a real good insensitive ethnic joke. And of course, the bereaved will undoubtedly form a secret organization that future conspiracy theorists will ascribe all sorts of fantastic events to, such as the infamous Maltor-Maltor sighting in 2403 over the Rhein river valley. It's actually quite unimportant, since nobody knows yet what a Maltor-Maltor and those pesky little Germans certainly do still know how to yield firearms, but that's another story for another time
-did you know that China and Russia were performing joint military operations on the peninsula directly across from North Korea and the Chinese have constructed effective security perimeters around three of the four main routes into China from NK and that the Chinese also ejected all the civilians from the area....nope, neither did i, here's the link.
SUBSCRIPT: to the last point, dummy. oh, ah yes. North Korea is the perfect opportunity for what will indefinitely constitute the genuine "Axis", namely Russia, China, France and a host of their minions to enshrine "preemption" as a legitimate tool. After all, if Dubya actually gets serious and realizes that there's only way to go about this in the Middle East and he preempts in, say Syria, then FrancoSinoRusso Axis will really be put to shame. The Chinese want to prove that they are ready for world leadership; think of the deferential press coverage the Chinese would get concerning their humane treatment of North Korea's impoverished people, how there was no local "resistance" as their was in Iraq. It would be the ultimate apparent PR coup--it would only really look that way to the people of the MSM and their minions. And it would remove a thorn in the Chinese and Russians side, eliminate a dangerous maniac and simultaneously make them that much more capable of taking on another unstable regime and or carrying out extensive repression at home. Imagine then the magnamity of the FranceSinoRusso Axis when they are able to reunite North and South Korea and expel American forces from the oh so strategically important peninsula....
--Taiwan anyone? North Korea seems to be the perfect opportunity for China to practice staging a massive amount of troops and moving them in to possible combat. China hasn't tried anything of significant external military activity since the 1970's when they fought Vietnam and damn near fought the Soviet Union. If this actually transpires, then be very very aware that sooner than sooner, the PRC will invade the ROC. Say hello to the first major engagment of the post-Jihadi conflict.
--At that point the Jihadis become an unstable element. Loyal to neither side, interested only in seeing the two combatants injured beyond repair, they pursue a policy of all out attrition. Suicide bombings whenever and wherever possible under any circumstances, larger attacks when possible, but the desperate Sunnis will do whatever it takes to preserve their traditions and of course, their modern, politically shaded interpretations of Islam and the Koran, which of course allows them to indulge in all the excesses of the West without suffering the punishments incurred by regular Muslims...sounds like the Plenary Indulgence of Indulgences. Oh how I wish someone in the Muslim world would think of Martin Luther as his spirit guide. But, not too many Muslims probably know who Martin Luther was or that I would think he might be their spirit guide. Oh well, I could use a good ole fashioned primitive spirit guide. At least it would be physically embodied and maybe it'd be something ferocious and evocative, like a venemous coral snake or maybe just a wild boar; always been partial to bears myself. No matter!
-SIDE NOTE: when open conflict between the Anglosphere and FrancoSinoRusso Sphere begins, you better be damn sure that the Jihadis see the FSR as the one who have the potential to do real damage. Let them know that we won't divert resources to hunting them down unless they shift their attention to our enemies. We must be prepared for this possibility, not to negotiate, but to take advantage of the situation. We must turn our enemies against each other. We must study Bismarck. We must learn to use our advantages and turn our weaknesses into advantages. We must awaken from the myopia.
But who wants to pay attenion when, gosh, things are just fine the way they are?
But of course, nothing much changes about nothing. And ultimately we're content with that, because so far what has only sort of kind of worked has sort of kind of worked and after all, that's better than most of human history when even the things that sort of kind of worked weren't really working at all, and if they were working, it was because you had fixed them, defended it from wandering barbarians or tribes or nature...because order had been brought from chaos.
Trouble with bringing order to chaos is that no matter how hard you try, the laws of thermodynamics will stop you. Every change affects another, and before you know it, you've upended the entire social order and now you can't even read the street signs in your hometown because they've been printed in Terroc, the new language of the continental empire which once was the western hemisphere. Stranger things have happened.
I must admit that I have personally always longed for an American empire. I remember being sorely disappointed that we didn't engage the Soviets after World War II, that MacArthur was pulled from combat by Truman, that Kennedy didn't just nuke the bastards into oblivion, and that Reagan didn't give ole Gorbie one right where it counted. So many missed opportunites. That we didn't simply make Mexico part of the United States during the Mexican-American war, that we never managed to peel off most of Canada, that the nation's the Caribbean aren't states, the central American states, the Phillipines, Japan, Germany, the list goes on and on. Of course, I can hear now the quotes that will be selected from this blog twenty years from now proving that I am militant fascist hellbent on world dominiation.
Quite the contrary, I'm merely hellbent on getting as many people to agree that the rule of law, the market economy and representative, limited, constitutional government is the only way to go. And if that means absorbing nations into the United States than so much the better--why, we have the only built-in mechanism for doing so of any nation; within the Constitution itself are instructions on how to add new states to the Union.
Instead, we limited ourselves to this little expanse of the Western hemisphere, one nation under Canada and above Mexico with that piece of Alaska and Hawaii and some other random places throughout the Pacific and Atlantic that are ours...but noooooooo....instead, we've got all this bullshit going on and no big ideas.
A few years ago I came up with the idea of Anti-Terrorist Treaty Organizations; ATTO's. I now think that's a mistake. While the threat of Islamofascists is immense, they are quickly being relegated to the ash heap of history, or at least, everyone who wants to fight us in open combat is. Meanwhile, the shadowy elements of the post-Jihad are beginning to come to light. And the light is not looking very pretty.
-A weakened and strategically impotent western continental europe and a resurgent, patriotic eastern europe find themselves at each other's throats concerning the fate of the EU and it's constitution--only Britains emerges unscathed and still a global power.
-Virtually every Sunni Muslim shamed into obseqious deferrence to the demographic reality concerning their religion: there are simply a lot more Shiites than Sunnies. That almost sounds like the ending to a real good insensitive ethnic joke. And of course, the bereaved will undoubtedly form a secret organization that future conspiracy theorists will ascribe all sorts of fantastic events to, such as the infamous Maltor-Maltor sighting in 2403 over the Rhein river valley. It's actually quite unimportant, since nobody knows yet what a Maltor-Maltor and those pesky little Germans certainly do still know how to yield firearms, but that's another story for another time
-did you know that China and Russia were performing joint military operations on the peninsula directly across from North Korea and the Chinese have constructed effective security perimeters around three of the four main routes into China from NK and that the Chinese also ejected all the civilians from the area....nope, neither did i, here's the link.
SUBSCRIPT: to the last point, dummy. oh, ah yes. North Korea is the perfect opportunity for what will indefinitely constitute the genuine "Axis", namely Russia, China, France and a host of their minions to enshrine "preemption" as a legitimate tool. After all, if Dubya actually gets serious and realizes that there's only way to go about this in the Middle East and he preempts in, say Syria, then FrancoSinoRusso Axis will really be put to shame. The Chinese want to prove that they are ready for world leadership; think of the deferential press coverage the Chinese would get concerning their humane treatment of North Korea's impoverished people, how there was no local "resistance" as their was in Iraq. It would be the ultimate apparent PR coup--it would only really look that way to the people of the MSM and their minions. And it would remove a thorn in the Chinese and Russians side, eliminate a dangerous maniac and simultaneously make them that much more capable of taking on another unstable regime and or carrying out extensive repression at home. Imagine then the magnamity of the FranceSinoRusso Axis when they are able to reunite North and South Korea and expel American forces from the oh so strategically important peninsula....
--Taiwan anyone? North Korea seems to be the perfect opportunity for China to practice staging a massive amount of troops and moving them in to possible combat. China hasn't tried anything of significant external military activity since the 1970's when they fought Vietnam and damn near fought the Soviet Union. If this actually transpires, then be very very aware that sooner than sooner, the PRC will invade the ROC. Say hello to the first major engagment of the post-Jihadi conflict.
--At that point the Jihadis become an unstable element. Loyal to neither side, interested only in seeing the two combatants injured beyond repair, they pursue a policy of all out attrition. Suicide bombings whenever and wherever possible under any circumstances, larger attacks when possible, but the desperate Sunnis will do whatever it takes to preserve their traditions and of course, their modern, politically shaded interpretations of Islam and the Koran, which of course allows them to indulge in all the excesses of the West without suffering the punishments incurred by regular Muslims...sounds like the Plenary Indulgence of Indulgences. Oh how I wish someone in the Muslim world would think of Martin Luther as his spirit guide. But, not too many Muslims probably know who Martin Luther was or that I would think he might be their spirit guide. Oh well, I could use a good ole fashioned primitive spirit guide. At least it would be physically embodied and maybe it'd be something ferocious and evocative, like a venemous coral snake or maybe just a wild boar; always been partial to bears myself. No matter!
-SIDE NOTE: when open conflict between the Anglosphere and FrancoSinoRusso Sphere begins, you better be damn sure that the Jihadis see the FSR as the one who have the potential to do real damage. Let them know that we won't divert resources to hunting them down unless they shift their attention to our enemies. We must be prepared for this possibility, not to negotiate, but to take advantage of the situation. We must turn our enemies against each other. We must study Bismarck. We must learn to use our advantages and turn our weaknesses into advantages. We must awaken from the myopia.
But who wants to pay attenion when, gosh, things are just fine the way they are?
Saturday, September 17, 2005
what IS happening...?
The world is changing. I sound like the beginning of the Lord of the Rings movie. Let's try again. The world HAS changed and what we are witnessing is the near total and complete erasure of the order that we have comfortably known up until this point. Not much can be done to alter the path that we are on, and even worse, any serious incursions will only prove to make the transition more difficult. This is of course, making several assumptions:
1. The People's Republic of China will survive as one state.
2. India will choose to become a full partner with the United States, along with Japan, Britain and Australia (and a smattering of other smaller states)
3. The primary focus of the US foreign policy remains the Terror World.
4. The Democrats continue their descent towards becoming the 21st century Whigs.
5. The European Union will be unable to extricate itself from the mores of "democratic socialism" (plain old fashioned collectivism from my standpoint) and will indeed become Eurabia, with horrifying consequences for the region of the world that spawned the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions, and pretty much everything of consequence to Western civilization upon until the Founding.
6. The United States remains a single state (Mexifornia anyone?)
7. Africa remains mostly impoverished and incapable of functioning as nation-states can as well as most of South America (compared to what will be the new "West")
8. No WMD's are used on US soil for the indeterminate future.
The indeterminate future. What would you have said to me if I came to you in 1992, during the Golden Era of the brief post Cold War period, and said that in 2005 we would have destroyed the Taliban and Saddam's regime, occupied both nations and begun the process of rebuilding the infrastructure and building civil societies, begun the process of reordering our military bases away from old allies who are now perfectly capable of defending themselves, and that Fox News would have more viewers that CNN and MSNBC combined, that the blogosphere (the what you say? by this point you're exasperated) would have managed to swing the pendulum of power out of the hands of the MSM (the what? the MSM?). My point is that what in the hell is going to be going on in 2017? That's only 13 years from now--13 years ago I would have argued that we would be engaged in a brutally intense cold war with China and facing a massive militarization of the Straits with the eminent possibility of war between the US and China concerning Taiwan and China's desire to become the global hegemon, thus supplanting the US.
Instead China has become the country that puts all those worthless pieces of plastic together after everyone else has built the really complex parts and now they think that every other problem that they have will vanish, just as sson as they control the entire world market of worthless pieces of plastic. Sounds like Stalin in the 50's who saw that Western nations produced a lot of steel, so, the Soviet Union should also produce steel. The ends for authoritarians are always on a piece of paper; the ends for liberals (I should remind people that I refuse to concede ground to modern liberals on the meaning of this word; modern liberals are not liberals, they are authoritarian reactionaries who have interest only in their own power) are always in a person's mind. A person, an individual makes decisions and then has to live with them. An authoritarian makes decision and everyone else has to live with it.
The thought that permeates the left: Somewhere, someplace, someone is doing something that I think they shouldn't be doing and the only way to stop this is by forcing them to stop.
Instead of my scenario above, we are faced with the same China which has witnessed the marvel of the US military and knows that they are nowhere near ready to try anything, yet. But oh how they are planning. Planning, planning, planning. But it will get them nowhere. The history of China is replete with examples of extensive cycles of centralization and decentralization. The more power Beijing tries to accumulate, the more quickly it will determine it will cement it's own end. The more wealth that the enterprise free zones on the eastern coast accumulate, the more they will be resented by the nations more than 900 million peasants, who live in relative poverty and complete and total lack of choice about their lives. They are given the illusion of local government and little else.
Ever notice how there is never any news about China? About, anything about China. Ever. Can you think of a story about China that talks about a particular Chinese person doing anything? What technologies have the Chinese invented in the past hundred years that were crucial to the development of the information economy?
Back to the list. I believe it is highly unlikely that the PRC will not survive to 2017. Scratch number one.
1. The People's Republic of China will survive as one state.
2. India will choose to become a full partner with the United States, along with Japan, Britain and Australia (and a smattering of other smaller states)
3. The primary focus of the US foreign policy remains the Terror World.
4. The Democrats continue their descent towards becoming the 21st century Whigs.
5. The European Union will be unable to extricate itself from the mores of "democratic socialism" (plain old fashioned collectivism from my standpoint) and will indeed become Eurabia, with horrifying consequences for the region of the world that spawned the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions, and pretty much everything of consequence to Western civilization upon until the Founding.
6. The United States remains a single state (Mexifornia anyone?)
7. Africa remains mostly impoverished and incapable of functioning as nation-states can as well as most of South America (compared to what will be the new "West")
8. No WMD's are used on US soil for the indeterminate future.
The indeterminate future. What would you have said to me if I came to you in 1992, during the Golden Era of the brief post Cold War period, and said that in 2005 we would have destroyed the Taliban and Saddam's regime, occupied both nations and begun the process of rebuilding the infrastructure and building civil societies, begun the process of reordering our military bases away from old allies who are now perfectly capable of defending themselves, and that Fox News would have more viewers that CNN and MSNBC combined, that the blogosphere (the what you say? by this point you're exasperated) would have managed to swing the pendulum of power out of the hands of the MSM (the what? the MSM?). My point is that what in the hell is going to be going on in 2017? That's only 13 years from now--13 years ago I would have argued that we would be engaged in a brutally intense cold war with China and facing a massive militarization of the Straits with the eminent possibility of war between the US and China concerning Taiwan and China's desire to become the global hegemon, thus supplanting the US.
Instead China has become the country that puts all those worthless pieces of plastic together after everyone else has built the really complex parts and now they think that every other problem that they have will vanish, just as sson as they control the entire world market of worthless pieces of plastic. Sounds like Stalin in the 50's who saw that Western nations produced a lot of steel, so, the Soviet Union should also produce steel. The ends for authoritarians are always on a piece of paper; the ends for liberals (I should remind people that I refuse to concede ground to modern liberals on the meaning of this word; modern liberals are not liberals, they are authoritarian reactionaries who have interest only in their own power) are always in a person's mind. A person, an individual makes decisions and then has to live with them. An authoritarian makes decision and everyone else has to live with it.
The thought that permeates the left: Somewhere, someplace, someone is doing something that I think they shouldn't be doing and the only way to stop this is by forcing them to stop.
Instead of my scenario above, we are faced with the same China which has witnessed the marvel of the US military and knows that they are nowhere near ready to try anything, yet. But oh how they are planning. Planning, planning, planning. But it will get them nowhere. The history of China is replete with examples of extensive cycles of centralization and decentralization. The more power Beijing tries to accumulate, the more quickly it will determine it will cement it's own end. The more wealth that the enterprise free zones on the eastern coast accumulate, the more they will be resented by the nations more than 900 million peasants, who live in relative poverty and complete and total lack of choice about their lives. They are given the illusion of local government and little else.
Ever notice how there is never any news about China? About, anything about China. Ever. Can you think of a story about China that talks about a particular Chinese person doing anything? What technologies have the Chinese invented in the past hundred years that were crucial to the development of the information economy?
Back to the list. I believe it is highly unlikely that the PRC will not survive to 2017. Scratch number one.
Friday, September 16, 2005
this wooden horse of troy malarkey...
every day the Left wakes up, stretches, and goes to work at figuring out how best to go about filling up their own wooden animal and then trying to smuggle it into the heartland and saying, "AHA! Now we've got DUBYA and we got him good!"
And every day everybody watches the Left load up their wooden asse, and every day they watch them storm out, and every day everybody else pops their head up for a second, shakes their heads, and returns to the "business of the nation" as the Left used to love to put their political chicanery during the 90's.
and every day, the Left is unable to believe that no one else will join them in getting their wooden asse ready, after all, today is the day that they are going to force the President into submission. Today they will stop John Roberts. Today they will use Katrina as political cannon fodder. Today they will embarass the President with what should have been a nominally private note to Condi Rice. Every day is Today. Every single damn day the Left wakes up in what seems to be a permanent myopia with but one goal in mind: get George Bush.
It reminds me that silly movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Each day she wakes up, unable to remember the events of the previous day. Her short term memory has been destroyed, and thus can remember everything that happened to up until the point at which her ability to store short term memories is wiped out. Something similar has happened to the Left in recent years; for them, the moment at which their memories stop working is the day the Supreme Court stopped Florida from counting chads, dimples and recounts from previous counts. For them, the issue of what the law was concerning the elections are irrelevant; the Court took the election away from Al Gore and gave it to this interloper, this smug, arrogant, stupid yet simultaneously briliant conspirator who has managed to use the war on terror as an excuse to expand his oil industry associates wallets. The contradictions throughout the Left's worldview are almost to incongruent to believe, and thus, it's not even important to talk about what they believe or how they got there. Their beliefs are helping them in any event, they're only forcing to go through this daily repetition of always looking for that single shred of evidence, that one memo, that one leak, that one natural catastrophe, that one moment when somebody, somewhere in America is not protected by the all-encompassing arms of the government. They want George Bush to be their father and at the same time they want to behave just teenagers, never listening, always running about trying to get one up on the old man. It's beyond absurd, it's psychotic.
I know from experience what sheer hatred of a political opponent can bring. When I was but 12 I became engrossed with the fatal reality that Bill Clinton, whom I had figured out was nothing more than a womanizer and political opportunist and that he would be President for at least four more years. But hating Clinton never got me anywhere with anyone, especially myself; it only made me want to go out and espouse a positive agenda of change cemented in my belief in the rule of law, the market economy, and representative, federal, constitutional government. The scandals, the mismanagement of international relations, the slippery slope of perjury being acceptable, the selling of America technologies for campaign cash, the administrations possession of thousands of FBI files on political opponents, Whitewater, Vince Foster, Ron Brown, Waco, and on and on and on and on...that wasn't the point. Really and truly, America has survived far worse than eight years of El Bubba hanging out in the White House having parties. I can effectively argue that Bill Clinton helped eviscerate more of the Democratic Party than the Right could ever have hoped to do, and did so in a fashion that allowed the Democrats to believe that they were still in it, even though they weren't at all. Hating Bill Clinton taught me how to like Bill Clinton, how to get past his behavior, his ethical shortcomings, how to see through him a vehicle for change. After all, the only two of Clinton's major legislative initiatives to ever become law that actually mattered were conservative ideas: NAFTA and welfare reform. And even if he did nothing else, which isn't true, that would be enough for me. Two victories, lets gets some more.
But the Left cannot ever like George Bush, and they never will, and thus, because the Democrats have eschewed the role of the loyal opposition, they will likely continue to build their giant wooden asse every day, not sure why everyone else isn't participating.
And every day everybody watches the Left load up their wooden asse, and every day they watch them storm out, and every day everybody else pops their head up for a second, shakes their heads, and returns to the "business of the nation" as the Left used to love to put their political chicanery during the 90's.
and every day, the Left is unable to believe that no one else will join them in getting their wooden asse ready, after all, today is the day that they are going to force the President into submission. Today they will stop John Roberts. Today they will use Katrina as political cannon fodder. Today they will embarass the President with what should have been a nominally private note to Condi Rice. Every day is Today. Every single damn day the Left wakes up in what seems to be a permanent myopia with but one goal in mind: get George Bush.
It reminds me that silly movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Each day she wakes up, unable to remember the events of the previous day. Her short term memory has been destroyed, and thus can remember everything that happened to up until the point at which her ability to store short term memories is wiped out. Something similar has happened to the Left in recent years; for them, the moment at which their memories stop working is the day the Supreme Court stopped Florida from counting chads, dimples and recounts from previous counts. For them, the issue of what the law was concerning the elections are irrelevant; the Court took the election away from Al Gore and gave it to this interloper, this smug, arrogant, stupid yet simultaneously briliant conspirator who has managed to use the war on terror as an excuse to expand his oil industry associates wallets. The contradictions throughout the Left's worldview are almost to incongruent to believe, and thus, it's not even important to talk about what they believe or how they got there. Their beliefs are helping them in any event, they're only forcing to go through this daily repetition of always looking for that single shred of evidence, that one memo, that one leak, that one natural catastrophe, that one moment when somebody, somewhere in America is not protected by the all-encompassing arms of the government. They want George Bush to be their father and at the same time they want to behave just teenagers, never listening, always running about trying to get one up on the old man. It's beyond absurd, it's psychotic.
I know from experience what sheer hatred of a political opponent can bring. When I was but 12 I became engrossed with the fatal reality that Bill Clinton, whom I had figured out was nothing more than a womanizer and political opportunist and that he would be President for at least four more years. But hating Clinton never got me anywhere with anyone, especially myself; it only made me want to go out and espouse a positive agenda of change cemented in my belief in the rule of law, the market economy, and representative, federal, constitutional government. The scandals, the mismanagement of international relations, the slippery slope of perjury being acceptable, the selling of America technologies for campaign cash, the administrations possession of thousands of FBI files on political opponents, Whitewater, Vince Foster, Ron Brown, Waco, and on and on and on and on...that wasn't the point. Really and truly, America has survived far worse than eight years of El Bubba hanging out in the White House having parties. I can effectively argue that Bill Clinton helped eviscerate more of the Democratic Party than the Right could ever have hoped to do, and did so in a fashion that allowed the Democrats to believe that they were still in it, even though they weren't at all. Hating Bill Clinton taught me how to like Bill Clinton, how to get past his behavior, his ethical shortcomings, how to see through him a vehicle for change. After all, the only two of Clinton's major legislative initiatives to ever become law that actually mattered were conservative ideas: NAFTA and welfare reform. And even if he did nothing else, which isn't true, that would be enough for me. Two victories, lets gets some more.
But the Left cannot ever like George Bush, and they never will, and thus, because the Democrats have eschewed the role of the loyal opposition, they will likely continue to build their giant wooden asse every day, not sure why everyone else isn't participating.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
the summer has ended...
it has been since mid-april that i posted and i did so for a few reasons:
1) my day job picked up outrageously and up until I went on vacation last month I was worked pretty much 60-90 hour weeks including the band from mid April until last month
2) everybody has something to say about everything. and everything is an epochal moment. and suddenly this is the most destructive thing we've ever witnessed. the way people run their mouths (including myself) makes me want to go to wal-mart and order fifty millions rolls of duct-tape and begin walking the nation with but one mission: to stop this wooden horse of troy malarkey. i'll get back to that allusion in a minute.
3) because everybody is talking, few people are genuinely listening. who needs to listen when so much can be said about nothing? and by nothing i mean the political circus, no, worse than a circus, the politcal rave that has sprung forth like the waters of the Gulf across the levees in NuOhlans, of the past five or so months since I last posted. What has really happened? Can anybody really remember the minute to minute, blow by blow accounting on the major news networks, the outrages and indignations, the interviews and crosstalk between the talking heads, and more importantly, does any of that matter? What did people do before society possessed a large, and largely segregated population of people whose sole job was to run around with cameras and film people and ask silly questions? How on earth did they fill up all twenty four hours of the day...how could they have possibly arrived at a conclusion about anything since they didn't know anything to begin with? For that matter, can anybody remember what was being said across the great bloviated blogosphere about, say Terry Schiavo, and how that was going to bring down Dubya?
4) the bloviation of the blogosphere continues. as a matter of fact, it's kind of bovine in it's bloviation. while i marvel at the variety and the vast amount of raw ability that the blogosphere brings to bear, it's important to bear in mind that all of these talents existed before the sphere. it's almost better to think of the blogosphere as spherical rather than something merely two-dimensional, which is the only representation we get physically. but really, the sphere is merely the abstraction of the physical world--it is every blogger's transcendental existence. it is the technological equivalent of the metaphysical, because here, we, bloggers that is, are able to if we wanted to, to record every waking thought, every idea, every nuance, every transgression, everything if we wanted to and for the first time in human history anyone with an internet connection can read your experience, your point of view, your way of looking at things, and say, to themselves, well golly gee, i remember reading that blog once and now i can't remember what he said. while hugh hewitt may disagree, which is fine, but the information revolution has not yet produced a reformation--at best, we're still writing our theses to post on the doors of the MSM and other detritus of industrial and preindustrial and primitive civilizations that still haunt the planet. there is now more information on the internet than is contained in the entire library of congress and that amount of information will only continue as we add to our already sizeable collection of literally billions upon billions of web pages--some of them containing very useful information, but for the most part, what we have collectively done is equivalent to several hundred million people fingerpaint and then make several billions photocopies and mail them to everyone a hundred times over. The sheer magnitude of information that exists is enough to make one's head spin if you really think about it, and what has it wrought? For the right side of the sphere, it has allowed for a healthy discussion of ideas and an honorable debate on just about everything; for the left side of the sphere, it has made them more conscious that somewhere, someplace, someone is doing something that they don't approve of and by somebody who they generally don't believe in, something has to be done about it, usually the government, which of course, they have very little say in right now and will probably only have less in the foreseeable future (we hope). For the people who have no interest in politics as a pasttime, the two sides of the sphere are mutually exclusive. Caricatures are the primary means of identifying the various poles and little thought is given to the idea that either side is right or wrong; to those who have no interest in the political process, both sides are ultimately only interested in what benefits them--the idea that a person, a political person whether pundit or elected official, might actually have a real idealogical position and actually hold firm to it is completely implausible, because they themselves have no understanding of history, philosophy, political science, economics, the concepts of the rule of law and marginalism and most important of all: they have no interest in educating themselves. For them, the past five months of hyperpartisan activity by the Left hasn't happened, nor will it be remembered, for them, this has been a really nice summer man. Sure, gas prices were high, but fuck it.
This is a point that nearly everyone across the entire spectrum of the sphere completely neglects to mention: what about the people who just don't give one rats ass about the trade deficit, right to die or right to choose, same sex marriage, budget negotiations, the Supreme Court vacancies, etc., etc., ad nauseum blah blah blah. I remember Nat Hentoff writing most frequently about this but only to point how uninvolved our civilization really is. A population of nearly 300 million, and a 120 million votes cast for President. What percentage of our population is underage? hmmmmmmm....not 180 million I can tell you that much. For those people, there is no history, there was never a past and there will not be a future: there is only now and the question that ranges on their minds is: what the fuck are we gonna do tonight, man? Generally phrased in that sort of language too, and while I am generally far more comfortable infusing my speech with colorful metaphors than most people, after a while, if used every other word, loses its potency and becomes nothing more than a slightly glorified modifier, a word that holds a special place in everyone's hearts for more than one reason alone. Now, strange as it is going to sound, I much prefer that they remain out of the loop for the sole fact that there are enough people out there running their mouths and their keyboards who honestly think that they know something when in fact they are only reporting about how the feel about some particular issue or another. With the left, it's always, well, I feel so, terrible about those poor people (and by poor we mean their socioeconomic status of course, not, those poor, poor people, you know the difference) and I want to help them. And of course, because they generally have feelings about how other people should live their lives and not about their own they usually tend to be interested in only effecting that change among people who are different or believe in different things from them. How else can one explain, that very nearly spontaneously, the urban areas of the country have become this last bastion of feelers, people who genuinely believe that everyone who doesn't live in the city is a Neanderthal. In Atlanta, people call it OTP. Outside the Perimeter. Got invited to a "gathering" of apparently people who know hundreds of other people and call them their "friends" at a bar ITP (inside the perimeter). Talking about this and that with one the girls who invited myself and Brett (she saw us at a show) asked again, where did we live? And the immediate response, "Wow, you guys are so OTP."
I couldn't help but be astonished at her complete and total assumption of superiority for having chosen to live inside the city. I can't stand American cities, terrible to drive in, horrible traffic, (this seperate from the terrible to drive in--all those damn untimed traffice lights!), significantly higher crime rates than the suburbs, and of course, all those make me feel better about everyone else regulations that just drive me absolutely spare.
More to come
1) my day job picked up outrageously and up until I went on vacation last month I was worked pretty much 60-90 hour weeks including the band from mid April until last month
2) everybody has something to say about everything. and everything is an epochal moment. and suddenly this is the most destructive thing we've ever witnessed. the way people run their mouths (including myself) makes me want to go to wal-mart and order fifty millions rolls of duct-tape and begin walking the nation with but one mission: to stop this wooden horse of troy malarkey. i'll get back to that allusion in a minute.
3) because everybody is talking, few people are genuinely listening. who needs to listen when so much can be said about nothing? and by nothing i mean the political circus, no, worse than a circus, the politcal rave that has sprung forth like the waters of the Gulf across the levees in NuOhlans, of the past five or so months since I last posted. What has really happened? Can anybody really remember the minute to minute, blow by blow accounting on the major news networks, the outrages and indignations, the interviews and crosstalk between the talking heads, and more importantly, does any of that matter? What did people do before society possessed a large, and largely segregated population of people whose sole job was to run around with cameras and film people and ask silly questions? How on earth did they fill up all twenty four hours of the day...how could they have possibly arrived at a conclusion about anything since they didn't know anything to begin with? For that matter, can anybody remember what was being said across the great bloviated blogosphere about, say Terry Schiavo, and how that was going to bring down Dubya?
4) the bloviation of the blogosphere continues. as a matter of fact, it's kind of bovine in it's bloviation. while i marvel at the variety and the vast amount of raw ability that the blogosphere brings to bear, it's important to bear in mind that all of these talents existed before the sphere. it's almost better to think of the blogosphere as spherical rather than something merely two-dimensional, which is the only representation we get physically. but really, the sphere is merely the abstraction of the physical world--it is every blogger's transcendental existence. it is the technological equivalent of the metaphysical, because here, we, bloggers that is, are able to if we wanted to, to record every waking thought, every idea, every nuance, every transgression, everything if we wanted to and for the first time in human history anyone with an internet connection can read your experience, your point of view, your way of looking at things, and say, to themselves, well golly gee, i remember reading that blog once and now i can't remember what he said. while hugh hewitt may disagree, which is fine, but the information revolution has not yet produced a reformation--at best, we're still writing our theses to post on the doors of the MSM and other detritus of industrial and preindustrial and primitive civilizations that still haunt the planet. there is now more information on the internet than is contained in the entire library of congress and that amount of information will only continue as we add to our already sizeable collection of literally billions upon billions of web pages--some of them containing very useful information, but for the most part, what we have collectively done is equivalent to several hundred million people fingerpaint and then make several billions photocopies and mail them to everyone a hundred times over. The sheer magnitude of information that exists is enough to make one's head spin if you really think about it, and what has it wrought? For the right side of the sphere, it has allowed for a healthy discussion of ideas and an honorable debate on just about everything; for the left side of the sphere, it has made them more conscious that somewhere, someplace, someone is doing something that they don't approve of and by somebody who they generally don't believe in, something has to be done about it, usually the government, which of course, they have very little say in right now and will probably only have less in the foreseeable future (we hope). For the people who have no interest in politics as a pasttime, the two sides of the sphere are mutually exclusive. Caricatures are the primary means of identifying the various poles and little thought is given to the idea that either side is right or wrong; to those who have no interest in the political process, both sides are ultimately only interested in what benefits them--the idea that a person, a political person whether pundit or elected official, might actually have a real idealogical position and actually hold firm to it is completely implausible, because they themselves have no understanding of history, philosophy, political science, economics, the concepts of the rule of law and marginalism and most important of all: they have no interest in educating themselves. For them, the past five months of hyperpartisan activity by the Left hasn't happened, nor will it be remembered, for them, this has been a really nice summer man. Sure, gas prices were high, but fuck it.
This is a point that nearly everyone across the entire spectrum of the sphere completely neglects to mention: what about the people who just don't give one rats ass about the trade deficit, right to die or right to choose, same sex marriage, budget negotiations, the Supreme Court vacancies, etc., etc., ad nauseum blah blah blah. I remember Nat Hentoff writing most frequently about this but only to point how uninvolved our civilization really is. A population of nearly 300 million, and a 120 million votes cast for President. What percentage of our population is underage? hmmmmmmm....not 180 million I can tell you that much. For those people, there is no history, there was never a past and there will not be a future: there is only now and the question that ranges on their minds is: what the fuck are we gonna do tonight, man? Generally phrased in that sort of language too, and while I am generally far more comfortable infusing my speech with colorful metaphors than most people, after a while, if used every other word, loses its potency and becomes nothing more than a slightly glorified modifier, a word that holds a special place in everyone's hearts for more than one reason alone. Now, strange as it is going to sound, I much prefer that they remain out of the loop for the sole fact that there are enough people out there running their mouths and their keyboards who honestly think that they know something when in fact they are only reporting about how the feel about some particular issue or another. With the left, it's always, well, I feel so, terrible about those poor people (and by poor we mean their socioeconomic status of course, not, those poor, poor people, you know the difference) and I want to help them. And of course, because they generally have feelings about how other people should live their lives and not about their own they usually tend to be interested in only effecting that change among people who are different or believe in different things from them. How else can one explain, that very nearly spontaneously, the urban areas of the country have become this last bastion of feelers, people who genuinely believe that everyone who doesn't live in the city is a Neanderthal. In Atlanta, people call it OTP. Outside the Perimeter. Got invited to a "gathering" of apparently people who know hundreds of other people and call them their "friends" at a bar ITP (inside the perimeter). Talking about this and that with one the girls who invited myself and Brett (she saw us at a show) asked again, where did we live? And the immediate response, "Wow, you guys are so OTP."
I couldn't help but be astonished at her complete and total assumption of superiority for having chosen to live inside the city. I can't stand American cities, terrible to drive in, horrible traffic, (this seperate from the terrible to drive in--all those damn untimed traffice lights!), significantly higher crime rates than the suburbs, and of course, all those make me feel better about everyone else regulations that just drive me absolutely spare.
More to come
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