Why does Iran want a nuclear capability? Is it at all plausible that it's not for weaponry? No. It's safe to conclude that their nuclear ambitions are militaristic (what fantastic self-deception would convince a thinking person otherwise?). So, then, why does Iran want nuclear weapons? To defend against what threat? Israel? Israel is armed to the teeth, including a nuclear arsenal capable of disintegrating Iran in a cloud of U-235, and hasn't used them to invade or to advance against Iran in spite of constant, hostile threats from the latter. It's pure fiction -- a kind of delusional, racist, Middle Age cogitation emitted by the Iranian clerics and kept endlessly circulating among its people -- that Israel poses some grave offensive threat. What's less fictional are unending remarks by that smiling buffoon Ahmadinejad that the solution to the Middle East crisis is to "destroy Israel".
The West is understandably paternalistic toward Iran and other shit-bag places where rational thought, a respect for historical accuracy, and the pursuit of lofty ideals like knowledge and science are in scarce supply, and subjugated to radicalized religious rhetoric. What's the alternative for the West? Ignore mountains of clear evidence to the contrary and insist on including them in the self-interested but ultimately rational dialogue that developed nations enjoy? That's a Peter Pan foreign policy. It's easiest, safest, and entirely justified in the interest of global and regional stability to just pester the hell out of their regime with paternalistic demands, sanctions, remonstrations, threats, and even if necessary military actions. As long as it keeps their religious-fueled racist craziness toward Israel and the West from taking form in physical weaponry -- making it possible to transform words into actions -- it's a paternalism we ought to embrace. So: those damn Iranian leaders, they act like children, cussing and threatening their neighbors, and never doing their science homework, or getting their history lessons straight. This fanatical ignoramus of a regime must be punished! Punished! Punished!
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Texas. Suburbia.
I have this neighbor that throws weekend football parties in a weird mixture of bacchanalian and high brow. His home is large and new, with expensive looking furniture and large glass windows in the back that open up to a beautiful view of Texas Hill Country. He grills fajitas on the porch with a vigor that I've seen only in true Texans. The oak ice chest next to the grill is frequently opened to reveal local and domestic beers for plucking out, cracking open on the handy bottle opener affixed to the exterior of the chest. There's this admirable functionality to partying in Texas Suburbia.
Inside, the wide screen is cranked to a pitch that makes talking difficult. It's a faux pax, I think, but people are in the nice house, with the fajitas grilling, and so 30 somethings and 40 somethings are reduced to staring at T.V., or retreating back to the kitchen to stand eye to eye. His wife I've been informed is "bitchy". No sign until there is one; she introduces the beautiful living room furniture by warning all that spills will be punished. The kind of quip that enforces the supremacy of her material things over our socializing, while she trots around with a thinly disguised patina of glibness. So, then, "bitchy". She has this attribute, that's all.
She drinks a Cabernet in a large glass. There are beers in hands elsewhere. Husband (his name is either "James", "Jim", or "Jimmy", take your pick he says) later pulls out a fine few bottles of tequila, joyously filling shot glasses with people smiling nervously around him. We're all feeling a little scandalous because it's barely past noon, but in nice houses somehow it's hard to feel like a loser, even slamming tequila for no obvious reason on a Sunday.
Later--within the hour, I guess--Jimmy's face is red, and he rocks from one leg to another while scooping ice cream out for kids. I feel like this must be just pure work for Jimmy now; he's drunk and the ice cream looks very frozen, and kids who are noisily running around upstairs and then downstairs and then upstairs and then demanding ice cream aren't fajitas or football or tequila. The obligatory dog is a puppy-- a gangly Golden Retriever --and is running this algorithm in its puppy head that brings each guest on the couch a slobbery cloth ball for retrieving. Each guest then prys the slobbery ball away and throws it somewhere safe in the house. Puppy runs and gets, returns to guest. Eventually puppy goes to next guest on couch and in this fashion manages to entertain himself for upwards of five hours, a feat that I'm confident not every guest quite manages.
In like a lion at noon, it's all over at 5:00 p.m., and we're all saying our good byes and rounding up children with Jimmy standing red faced at the door calling after us that he hopes we aren't leaving hungry. I think his wife is sleeping now. A strange, quasi-depression is knocking at my consciousness and I'm looking at the other faces as we saunter back home to see if it's intruding on them too. But I don't think it is, or at least this kind of impromptu investigation won't ever reveal it. The faces of suburbia are plastered with an impenetrable veneer of smiles and success and contentedness that admits nothing probing or philosophical or contrary. It's admirable, really, this capacity for perpetual vacuity. Notable, at least.
But anyway Jimmy's party is, like all such parties, quickly forgotten. New horizons in Texas Suburbia await. Kids go off to school the next morning and jobs are attended to; husbands march off to work, and wives (many of them) stay home, mixing in the child-free hours intervals of mindless Web surfing with determined spurts of house cleaning or the administration of various financial or other affairs. Weekends explode with laughter and tequila and serious talks of football teams and furniture and the water requirements of different grasses for lawns. Gossip breezes in and out and never ventures past what so-and-so three houses down is up to, or whether Nancy got too drunk or Mario blurted that he's only with Sandra because of the kids, or that the Stearns' dog keeps getting out and barking at Josh as he's leaving for work.
*****
Finding oneself deep in Texas Suburbia is like venturing past a cultural event horizon, where no information of broader interest can be transmitted. All is local, immediate, and desperately uninteresting to any poor sap who wanders in without first a proper period of acclimation. Conversational priorities are codified in game-like, deterministic, if unspoken rules, like rock-paper-scissors: Concrete beats abstract. Local beats remote. Ergo, the concept of "education" is a non-starter. But discussion of various events at a particular grade or middle school might carry folks past midnight. The principal at Winkley Elementary ignites discussion, a city-wide matter (like the mayor's election) earns a friendly chat, a state-wide issue (like the state budget, or state senate affairs) a smattering of cautious remarks. Once outside the borders of Texas, though, all is necessarily perfunctory, if discussed at all. Offer up an issue of, say, international interest, like the destabilization of the Middle East, and you'll get awkward, reserved, cooky-cutter responses that, if captured on paper, would not seem out of place inscribed with a crayon.
Yet, nowhere can one find such vast repositories of information on matters local and trivial. Discussion about potholes (there was a particularly deep and nasty one just down our street, caused by one of the custom home builders' heavy equipment, no doubt), might last the entire second half of a football game, if one includes related stories. Gossip about a neighbor (one of our neighbors scolded another neighbor's kid, for instance) might begin and end a get-together (if not by admission of those participating, by observation of any bored fool present who was not). This self-serving vapidness of upper middle class suburbia is everywhere, I imagine. In Texas, it's Texas-sized.
But counteracting the existential nightmare of finding oneself trapped in such a web is the baser but entirely pleasant and mostly satisfactory realization that tequila, fajitas, cold beer and high definition football prop up the damaged spirit and coax one from week to week with only vague comprehension that life itself is passing by. Like a fish plucked from deep oceans of knowledge and deposited on the dry rotten planks of a junk, one will flop and flounder for a spell, but retreating not to nihilism but to a smiling numbness offers hope that the months and years will pass without great incident, and the possibility of eventual release can give quiet solace. Some may worry that such resignation will prove permanent, but for thinking types this outcome I'm convinced is not likely. Few people, knowing the treasure and majesty of the broader world, would embrace lengthy compromise of this sort in plain view of opportunities to the contrary. So then, fear not. Wait for such an opportunity. And in the meantime, Voilà! To Jimmy! The time passes by.
Inside, the wide screen is cranked to a pitch that makes talking difficult. It's a faux pax, I think, but people are in the nice house, with the fajitas grilling, and so 30 somethings and 40 somethings are reduced to staring at T.V., or retreating back to the kitchen to stand eye to eye. His wife I've been informed is "bitchy". No sign until there is one; she introduces the beautiful living room furniture by warning all that spills will be punished. The kind of quip that enforces the supremacy of her material things over our socializing, while she trots around with a thinly disguised patina of glibness. So, then, "bitchy". She has this attribute, that's all.
She drinks a Cabernet in a large glass. There are beers in hands elsewhere. Husband (his name is either "James", "Jim", or "Jimmy", take your pick he says) later pulls out a fine few bottles of tequila, joyously filling shot glasses with people smiling nervously around him. We're all feeling a little scandalous because it's barely past noon, but in nice houses somehow it's hard to feel like a loser, even slamming tequila for no obvious reason on a Sunday.
Later--within the hour, I guess--Jimmy's face is red, and he rocks from one leg to another while scooping ice cream out for kids. I feel like this must be just pure work for Jimmy now; he's drunk and the ice cream looks very frozen, and kids who are noisily running around upstairs and then downstairs and then upstairs and then demanding ice cream aren't fajitas or football or tequila. The obligatory dog is a puppy-- a gangly Golden Retriever --and is running this algorithm in its puppy head that brings each guest on the couch a slobbery cloth ball for retrieving. Each guest then prys the slobbery ball away and throws it somewhere safe in the house. Puppy runs and gets, returns to guest. Eventually puppy goes to next guest on couch and in this fashion manages to entertain himself for upwards of five hours, a feat that I'm confident not every guest quite manages.
In like a lion at noon, it's all over at 5:00 p.m., and we're all saying our good byes and rounding up children with Jimmy standing red faced at the door calling after us that he hopes we aren't leaving hungry. I think his wife is sleeping now. A strange, quasi-depression is knocking at my consciousness and I'm looking at the other faces as we saunter back home to see if it's intruding on them too. But I don't think it is, or at least this kind of impromptu investigation won't ever reveal it. The faces of suburbia are plastered with an impenetrable veneer of smiles and success and contentedness that admits nothing probing or philosophical or contrary. It's admirable, really, this capacity for perpetual vacuity. Notable, at least.
But anyway Jimmy's party is, like all such parties, quickly forgotten. New horizons in Texas Suburbia await. Kids go off to school the next morning and jobs are attended to; husbands march off to work, and wives (many of them) stay home, mixing in the child-free hours intervals of mindless Web surfing with determined spurts of house cleaning or the administration of various financial or other affairs. Weekends explode with laughter and tequila and serious talks of football teams and furniture and the water requirements of different grasses for lawns. Gossip breezes in and out and never ventures past what so-and-so three houses down is up to, or whether Nancy got too drunk or Mario blurted that he's only with Sandra because of the kids, or that the Stearns' dog keeps getting out and barking at Josh as he's leaving for work.
*****
Finding oneself deep in Texas Suburbia is like venturing past a cultural event horizon, where no information of broader interest can be transmitted. All is local, immediate, and desperately uninteresting to any poor sap who wanders in without first a proper period of acclimation. Conversational priorities are codified in game-like, deterministic, if unspoken rules, like rock-paper-scissors: Concrete beats abstract. Local beats remote. Ergo, the concept of "education" is a non-starter. But discussion of various events at a particular grade or middle school might carry folks past midnight. The principal at Winkley Elementary ignites discussion, a city-wide matter (like the mayor's election) earns a friendly chat, a state-wide issue (like the state budget, or state senate affairs) a smattering of cautious remarks. Once outside the borders of Texas, though, all is necessarily perfunctory, if discussed at all. Offer up an issue of, say, international interest, like the destabilization of the Middle East, and you'll get awkward, reserved, cooky-cutter responses that, if captured on paper, would not seem out of place inscribed with a crayon.
Yet, nowhere can one find such vast repositories of information on matters local and trivial. Discussion about potholes (there was a particularly deep and nasty one just down our street, caused by one of the custom home builders' heavy equipment, no doubt), might last the entire second half of a football game, if one includes related stories. Gossip about a neighbor (one of our neighbors scolded another neighbor's kid, for instance) might begin and end a get-together (if not by admission of those participating, by observation of any bored fool present who was not). This self-serving vapidness of upper middle class suburbia is everywhere, I imagine. In Texas, it's Texas-sized.
But counteracting the existential nightmare of finding oneself trapped in such a web is the baser but entirely pleasant and mostly satisfactory realization that tequila, fajitas, cold beer and high definition football prop up the damaged spirit and coax one from week to week with only vague comprehension that life itself is passing by. Like a fish plucked from deep oceans of knowledge and deposited on the dry rotten planks of a junk, one will flop and flounder for a spell, but retreating not to nihilism but to a smiling numbness offers hope that the months and years will pass without great incident, and the possibility of eventual release can give quiet solace. Some may worry that such resignation will prove permanent, but for thinking types this outcome I'm convinced is not likely. Few people, knowing the treasure and majesty of the broader world, would embrace lengthy compromise of this sort in plain view of opportunities to the contrary. So then, fear not. Wait for such an opportunity. And in the meantime, Voilà! To Jimmy! The time passes by.
On the Assymetry of "is" and "are"
Rappers, different stripes of yokels, and drivers of 30 MPG smart cars frequently replace "are" with "is" in dialogue, resulting in constructions like "they is" (e.g., "Rodney and Mikey? They is out back, Mama.") or "we is too" and so on. Good stuff. But rarely do we see the reverse: "He isn't back yet" is not often converted into "He aren't back yet". "She is" doesn't end up "She are". So there's a kind of assymetry to the improper use of these words, and I think it has not been explained fully or even fairly recognized. What makes "is" an attractive substitution for "are", but not vice versa?
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
When Symptoms First Appeared
I have time for blogs of this sort:
"when symptoms first appeared"??? Won't "when symptoms appeared" suffice? It's weird how we do this with language.
"when symptoms first appeared"??? Won't "when symptoms appeared" suffice? It's weird how we do this with language.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
On Rationality
Consider:
(1) We're in the midst of one of the greatest economic downturns since the Great Depression. We've been warned. Scared. And so we passed the massive STIMULUS. The jump start that nit wits like "One Trick" Paul I-Wish-I-Was-Czar Krugman threw his hat in for (and then a towel when it was only hundreds of billions. Just like FDR and the New Deal, just not enough SPENDING for Krugman.) So, it's the economy stupid. In dire need of our best efforts. NOW.
(2) We must also pass universal health care NOW, while struggling to get out of the_greatest_economic_downturn_since_the_great_depression.
Little, silly question: why (2) now? Does anyone really believe that expanding health care to 50 million Americans is an aid to economic stimulus? Or that it will magically be paid for without taxation on business (8%), or individuals (?)? That it has no economic costs?
So, from (1), we need to save our economic asses. From (2), we must now embark on the bold initiative towards the Just Society. But, again, suppose someone bothers to stop for a moment, and ponder whether it's really rational to assert (1) and (2) together, what then? What will become of this dangerous, questioning soul? An "obstructionist", no doubt. And perhaps, "against us", and even (my favorite) "against progress".
The White House, after failing in Hillary-like fashion, will no doubt blame it on the Neanderthal Republicans. But it's the bluest of canines in Democrat land, fearing themselves soon shuffled out of Congress, ignominously, leaving a wake of bold talk and mountains of debt, that are finding in spite of temporary pressure the deeper voice of American sensibility so needed today. Not even Obama can square the circle of reconciling (1) and (2). A few Democrats (and Republicans) on the Hill know it. Bravo.
(1) We're in the midst of one of the greatest economic downturns since the Great Depression. We've been warned. Scared. And so we passed the massive STIMULUS. The jump start that nit wits like "One Trick" Paul I-Wish-I-Was-Czar Krugman threw his hat in for (and then a towel when it was only hundreds of billions. Just like FDR and the New Deal, just not enough SPENDING for Krugman.) So, it's the economy stupid. In dire need of our best efforts. NOW.
(2) We must also pass universal health care NOW, while struggling to get out of the_greatest_economic_downturn_since_the_great_depression.
Little, silly question: why (2) now? Does anyone really believe that expanding health care to 50 million Americans is an aid to economic stimulus? Or that it will magically be paid for without taxation on business (8%), or individuals (?)? That it has no economic costs?
So, from (1), we need to save our economic asses. From (2), we must now embark on the bold initiative towards the Just Society. But, again, suppose someone bothers to stop for a moment, and ponder whether it's really rational to assert (1) and (2) together, what then? What will become of this dangerous, questioning soul? An "obstructionist", no doubt. And perhaps, "against us", and even (my favorite) "against progress".
The White House, after failing in Hillary-like fashion, will no doubt blame it on the Neanderthal Republicans. But it's the bluest of canines in Democrat land, fearing themselves soon shuffled out of Congress, ignominously, leaving a wake of bold talk and mountains of debt, that are finding in spite of temporary pressure the deeper voice of American sensibility so needed today. Not even Obama can square the circle of reconciling (1) and (2). A few Democrats (and Republicans) on the Hill know it. Bravo.
Friday, July 3, 2009
The Morning
Neil Williams' eyes squinted in the light diffuse through the window of his studio apartment and at once he felt that sinking feeling of sobriety after so long as King. Reasons. Problems. Worries. And a headache.
He could never eat, after a night like last.
Without eating came withdrawal, and with withdrawal, more beer. This hopeless cycle Neil had come to accept, but the price he paid for being King was obvious enough. He was no fool.
She was fast asleep and he instantly hated her. Playing her part in his failures and still here. The ones that stayed, they were the worst. Fucking bitch. There was beer in the fridge and that was the only thought that brought with it less than full depression.
After a six pack of beer he could face her, well enough to get her out of his place without incident, anyway. She'd want to go get coffee or something like that, but she was a fool, and it would be hours before he could see her again as King.
He could never eat, after a night like last, and so he'd drink the beer, poured in a cup, sitting on his patio and wait until part of the King would show. Then, he could eat. And maybe she'd have left, or at least he could talk to her.
Somehow the apartment complex had deposited the trash dumpster directly across the way from his patio. Late at night, raccoons would sniff into it, and he would watch them on his patio. Surly bastards. Walk across the street with your shirt off and a slosh of whiskey and stare them down.
Three messages on his phone. Don't look until that first beer. No, don't look until several. The world was full of perky imbeciles organizing and arranging their lives as if they might be King through nervous energy and schedules. But you can't be King that way. King is King.
She rises and starts talking but by now he's into his third beer and her image and the sounds she emits have become bearable.
"What's up?" she says. Geez. It will be a while before he's King again.
He could never eat, after a night like last.
Without eating came withdrawal, and with withdrawal, more beer. This hopeless cycle Neil had come to accept, but the price he paid for being King was obvious enough. He was no fool.
She was fast asleep and he instantly hated her. Playing her part in his failures and still here. The ones that stayed, they were the worst. Fucking bitch. There was beer in the fridge and that was the only thought that brought with it less than full depression.
After a six pack of beer he could face her, well enough to get her out of his place without incident, anyway. She'd want to go get coffee or something like that, but she was a fool, and it would be hours before he could see her again as King.
He could never eat, after a night like last, and so he'd drink the beer, poured in a cup, sitting on his patio and wait until part of the King would show. Then, he could eat. And maybe she'd have left, or at least he could talk to her.
Somehow the apartment complex had deposited the trash dumpster directly across the way from his patio. Late at night, raccoons would sniff into it, and he would watch them on his patio. Surly bastards. Walk across the street with your shirt off and a slosh of whiskey and stare them down.
Three messages on his phone. Don't look until that first beer. No, don't look until several. The world was full of perky imbeciles organizing and arranging their lives as if they might be King through nervous energy and schedules. But you can't be King that way. King is King.
She rises and starts talking but by now he's into his third beer and her image and the sounds she emits have become bearable.
"What's up?" she says. Geez. It will be a while before he's King again.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald. So cynical I get these days. He fires out blog after blog deterministically anti-Bush administration but couched so much in the language of general "accountability" and "fairness" and so many other moralisms that give the appearance of journalistic objectivity. Drop the show. I'll eat my hat (many hats I have, I'll pick the one that has a chance of going down with minimal dyspepsia) if Greenwald in his crystal ethical palace ever turns the gripe-thrower (like a flame thrower, but it throws partisan gripes) at a non-Conservative office holder. In Limbaugh-like fashion this legal officianado has made his career writing books and blogging about the links between Bush adminstration and Hitler. But of course, we're to believe that this is all about "accountability" and "respect for law" and so on. He's the whistle blower. Only, the whistle blows so selectively, and when the last enemy recedes into history he'll need immediately to grab onto another. Deterministically, a Republican.
On another, related note, I'm convinced that people who read too much news--especially online--become dumber, and less educated. Much like we thought T.V. would do. Go read a book.
On another, related note, I'm convinced that people who read too much news--especially online--become dumber, and less educated. Much like we thought T.V. would do. Go read a book.
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