Category: Painful Truths

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The Middle East- the Undiscovered Country

Frank J points us to a chilling but logical explanation of our current, er, issues with folks on the Islamic side of the world-

The Czar would like to remind the rest of the media that a 17-minute mini-mess of an insulting parody on YouTube made by an imaginary Israeli-American filmmaker (but apparently made by a very real Egyptian hoaxer looking to spark a violent protest) is not a trailer for an upcoming movie. You have been duped by the bad guys, and you keep repeating their lie either because you want to believe it, or you enjoy seeing these protests spread. By the way, media, you think most of these protestors even have access to YouTube? No, that’s been shut off by their governments, so they are simply reacting to what you keep repeating. Nice work, jerks.

Eric’s piece is fundamentally correct: the typical Egyptian protestor is as unswayed by discussions of the range of acceptable free speech as a badger would be impressed by your algebra homework. This is beyond alien—it is not worth the time to ponder. And Eric points out, this is far more reaching than just Egypt—Eric highlights a quote that mostEuropeans cannot fathom how free speech is supposed to work. And sadly, Eric concludes with perfect logic that democracy as we expect it will never happen when the very first liberty is an alien concept.

From there the post leads to a logical conclusion.

Because what they do understand is that President Obama is a weak horse: he has neither the desire nor capacity to deal with this. And never mind whether or not this is a failure of the President, the Secretary of State, the Embassy staff, the military, or whomever…again, those are our distinctions—they see President Obama as the American government. If you disagree, read Eric’s quotes in his blog—at least one protester thinks President Obama produced the movie himself, because that’s what their government does.

Folks, we’re being led by amateurs and babes-in-the-woods, and if we don’t rectify this problem at the ballot box then I despair for our country.

RTWT here.

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Burge on the Midwest Crisis

Things are getting frightening in flyover country–

A thousand miles south of Wisconsin’s sprawling Holstein pastures, Josh Davidson peers between the drawn drapes of his Plano, Texas apartment, looking for signs of suspicious green-clad strangers. It is his third day at the address, but he is already scanning the classified ads for his next residence. For this 37-year old, staying ahead of Packer radicals has become a full time job.

In November, Davidson — a self-described diehard Dallas Cowboys fan — made a fateful decision that would alter his life and whose reverberations are currently shaking the foundations of two societies.
“The Appleby’s in Frisco has two big screens, and I liked going there Sunday for the Cowboy games,” Davidson explained. “But one weekend there was this annoying bunch of Wisconsin immigrant idiots with foam rubber cheese wedge hats, screaming for the Packers on the other screen.”

In response, Davidson drew four provocative cartoons of revered Packer coach Vince Lombardi, and distributed Xeroxed copies to his co-workers at VHT Technologies in Plano. What he didn’t know is that one of co-workers was an alumnus of Marquette, and the cartoons would soon be circulated throughout the Packer world.

The response would be immediate and visceral.

This is a crisis that calls for cooler heads to prevail- Roger Goodell, where are you?

All I know is that my beloved Saints must venture into the chilly confines of the Frozen Tundra next Sunday- and waiting for them will be (especially after Monday’s debacle) thousands of pissed-off Packer Fans and and a football team with jihad on its mind. Tragedy could ensue…

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Striking Refs and Nasty Ol’ Owners

After last nights Monday Night Football game, due to some really terrible calls (and this after a weekend of really terrible calls) , one of which cost the Packers a win, there has arisen a shrieking chorus of calls to “bring the refs back”- basically, at any cost and on any terms. In the spirit of clear thinking, let’s look at what the argument is all about.

Refs side: Refs currently make around $149,000 a year for about six months work- they all have other jobs. Ed Hochuli is a lawyer. Scott Green runs a D.C. lobbying firm. They also have film and rules study in the off-season, and many travel to the preseason games to keep their skills up, so there is a contention that it is in fact a full-time job but treated as part-time. They also want to keep their current pension plan instead of the 401k the NFL is offering.

Owners side: They have offered the refs a raise (no figure mentioned, but since the international average for fulltime refs is between $300,000 and $400,000 one can make a fairly good guess) but want to kill the current pension plan and move the refs to a 401k-based plan that would not leave the NFL as exposed to the vagaries of the economy. They also have proposed making the refs full-time and adding 21 members to the staff to bring in new blood. They also want to be able to review refs on performance on a game-by-game basis, with the power to sit them down if they do not reach an acceptable level.

My take: Per Michael Schotty, an “NFL National Lead Writer” (whatever the hell that is),

The actual dollars-and-cents difference between the NFL and its officials is a problem smaller than both sides would admit. The biggest reason they have not come to an agreement is both sides have been trying to gain leverage and have not done enough negotiating to put forth a good-faith effort.

That’s probably true, and it also misses the point.

Everyone in this country is scared- scared for their job, scared for their retirement, scared of what the economy is doing, and it’s causing them to act in frightened ways. Mention changing a pension, and the knee-jerk reaction is “I’m gonna get screwed here” and a refusal to consider any alternative. The underlying trust in our way of life has gone away.

Everywhere I see evidence of a generation- the Baby Boomers (mine!)- digging in- “I’ve got mine, if I can just hold out for another 5-10 years, I’ll have beat it and the rest of you can go to hell”. No matter if ways of doing things have proved to be disastrous in the long term- it’s what got me this far and by Gawd I’m not changing it- a sort of national ‘kick-the-can-down-the-road’ moment.

There’s also a natural tendency to look at those in charge and feel they’ve got theirs and they’re going to look out for numero uno so why shouldn’t I, and when someone like NFL Commissioner Goodell makes around $10,000,000 a year it’s not unreasonable for folk to feel they want a piece of that pie too.

So we have the present mess in the NFL- which I think is also symptomatic of what’s happening all around this country today, most recently in Indiana and Chicago but not confined to there.

So what’s the answer? I have no clue. We all grew up with a certain set of assumptions about how things were supposed to work in this country and, one by one, they’ve all become ‘no longer operative’. One thing I’m really sure of- no matter what happens with the ref lockout, or even the election, I can guarantee the next few years are going to be interesting- in the Chinese curse sense of the phrase.

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Apropos of Nothing

“In Romania, on moonlit nights, the peasant women used to look down into a well until they saw the reflection of the moon. Then they let down a pail, slowly drew up water with the moon in it and, with a spoon, drank its reflection. Looking down into the well at that moment, they could see the face of their future bridegroom.”

I’m a sucker for pretty quotes

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All Fall Down

Well, here we are. The last week-and-a-half  has been just filled with WTF moments, so many I feel pretty much numb. The Lightbringer

seems determined that, by gawd, if he can’t have four more years, then he’s going to bring the whole mess down around us. It also seems a large proportion of the citizenry are just fine with that.

As Zevon said, It Ain’t That Pretty At All.

Some links for your perusal-

Richard Fernandez talks about shame

The One on Letterman, via Ann Althouse

The Diplomad has a Thought For The Day

Gerard reminisces

Miz Weasel admits defeat

Lastly, House of Eratosthenes (whom, if you are not reading regularly, you should be) savages an old friend from Atlanta.

To close, I’m going to quote an Eighties band I heard this morning, mainly because the song spoke to me about where we seem to be headed. Remember, a tyrant’s best method for diverting attention from trouble at home is to start trouble abroad…

 

Ultravox
All Fall Down

When I was a boy there’s a dream that I had
That a war if it’s fought was for good against bad
And I woke up to find that the world had gone mad
And we’d all fall down

And I feel like a child again sitting observing
You’re toying with power, your fingers are burning
You’re pushing so hard that the worms won’t be turning
We’ll all fall down

While you try to pretend you’re a god upon high
With your party ideals and your squeaky clean lies
When it comes to the crunch you’re no smarter than I
And we’ll all fall down

If it’s colour or creed or your old time religion
Well fighting for that shows a pure lack of vision
The fight that we strive is the fight to survive
And we’ll all fall down

Well look in the mirror and what do you see
An American, Russian, a soldier or me
When you’ve all pressed the buttons just where will you be
When we all fall down

It gets harder to see just what future’s in store for us
Hard to see through all the wool you pull over us
Words that you give are just words to console us
We’ll all fall down

And what will you do when you’ve pulled the release
When the sound of the thunder has drowned out the pleas
Cos after all that was your idea of peace
When we all fall down

No sun for a world that once stood so tall
No wind’s going to blow and no rain’s going to fall
No flowers for graves, in fact no graves at all
When we all fall down