What If You Knew Her?

I couldn't go with the iconic image, because Minions isn't about violence pr0n. But then again:

Do we now sing "one of these things is not like the other?" Yes and no. The young person who's about to get tased did, actually, in a narrow and technical sense, commit a crime. The young person who may or may not be about to get shot? Probably not so much. Should agents of the state be brandishing weapons in either case? Definitely not so much.

The first pic was taken 40 years ago today. I was 9 years old. There are those who believe that my personal relationship with rage traces back to that day. Others believe that there may have been something about a hamster that John the Daftist left outside in the tool shed. Others still believe I'm just lazy and want something to blame for all the debauchery. I'm sure they're all correct.

Here's the big joke: damn, these kids today have weird hair.

Where Does It All Start?

It starts, of course, where everything else does today, with some poor bastards walking down a fucking Baghdad street carrying AK47s nothing at all RPGs either nothing at all or video cameras, depending on their preference. Then they get shot blown to fucking bits by some cracker fuckers in a fucking helicopter gunship. Then the fucking crackers in a fucking helicopter gunship zero in on the one poor bastard carrying a RPG video camera, except he wasn't any more because he had been shot by some fucking crackers in a fucking helicopter gunship, wait for some people to try to help him, and then blast the fucking shit out of him, the people who try to help him, their van, and their children who happen to be in the van, all while giggling and laughing that the helpful people trying to help a guy who was fucking wounded shouldn't have brought their children into the war zone that is the neighborhood where they fucking live.

I'm pretty fucking disturbed by this, beyond the massive swelling of pride in my own white Americanness that this footage instills. So disturbed that it'll be a while before I can get to the point, which is actually about other persons and their effect on my life, in varying degrees of what I do and don't care about. Because when I see cracker fuckers in a fucking helicopter gunship blowing pretty clearly nonterrorist people the fuck up because they think that the video camera that hasn't made any attempt to shoot down their fucking helicopter gunship is a fucking RPG, I get pretty fucking pissed off. I'm pissed off at them for being stupid fucking crackers with no sense of professionalism, despite all I hear about how wonderful and cool and professional our all-volunteer military is, and despite having to stand up and applaud some lucky soldier, airman, or squid who just got back from some horrible place for about five fucking minutes every time I go to a hockey game, just to avoid the stigma of remaining in my seat and applauding for about 10 seconds, which is what the thing actually merits, and despite none of the friends who I've seen off to the war and, thankfully, back home safe, being dumbass cracker motherfucker pigs who jizz their fucking shorts over fucking killing people. In fact, what I'm thinking is what an insult to my friends these stupid fucking pieces of hating fascist shit are, and about how glad I am that my friends do not appear to have lost control of their essential humanity to such a remarkable and reprehensible degree when they went off to war.

Would I like to consider the possibility that the footage is somehow faked? Yes. Yes, I would. But that's not really possible, because it appears that military sources have conceded that the footage is genuine.

But this post isn't about cracker murderers. It's about some people and how they are affecting my life, which is to say that some are, and are very much in the news, and some aren't, really, except in ways that piss me off in a way that is sort of a relief from the kind of pissed off I am about illiterate fucking cracker murderers in fucking helicopter gunships emblazoned with my country's flag, and are very much in the news also. In fact, the whole theme is just an excuse to lump some shit together in one post, a post that was going to be just about various riffs on people who happen to be persons of color until I realized how very, very pissed off I am about murderers in my country's uniform.

Let's start with TBogg, who tells us about dumbass innumerate Teabaggers who think that some Gallup Poll supports a calculation that half of African-Americans are Teabaggers. You see, according to this poll, six percent of Teabaggers are Negroes, and 12 percent of Americans are Negroes, and therefore, half of Negroes are Teabaggers. Punchline: the fucktards to whom TBogg refers are Harvard professors. Fight fiercely.

Let's move on to Michael Steele. Usually I just tell you to throw Oreos about him and gloss over the details. But it appears that Mr. Steele, who was once a footman at my state's Governor's Mansion, is in a big old hurting sack of shit-trouble. This is because it appears that Republicans like kinky sex, and in this case, it really appears that appearances are true. So Mr. Steele approved some expenditures of party money on Republican activities related to watching kinky sex, and now his staffers are getting thrown under buses and the Republican Party appears to have suddenly realized that its leader is a Negro. Not being possessed of helicopter gunships, they're trying to get Mr. Steele hoisted up on a cross, because that way they get to martyr him and blame our side all at the same time. My friend Sasha claims that they're afraid to crucify Mr. Steele; I disagree, because I think they're dumb enough to think they can have it all. In fact, Steele is such a fucking moron that he's probably helping them plan it. The longer this goes without Steele noticing the zombie-like odor wafting from his political corpse, the funnier it's going to be.

The last person, who happens to be of color, of whom I would like to take note is one Donovan McNabb, a man of whom I have some severe internal conflicts of opinion. You'll never hear me say a nice word about a Dallas Cowboy, and my DNA-level hatred of the Philadelphia Eagles approaches my DNA-level loathing of the Dallas Cowboys. Don McNabb, however, is a standup guy. I have noted in these pages that he once threw four touchdown passes on an actual broken fucking leg. He has weathered years of the kind of shit that players only get when they play for Philadelphia teams, and done so graciously and remained a very fine particpant in that community and the national community. I probably have more respect for Don McNabb than I have for any other football player on a team I hate.

Yeah, let's keep that in the present tense. The Redskins' trade for McNabb is bizarre. He's older than Jaime Moreno, in football (pick your flavor) years. The Skins coughed up two draft picks for him. The trade is no less bizarre from the Iggles' perspective; why the fucking fuck would you trade, to a division rival, a player who could very well destroy you, playing for that division rival? Pile onto this some ancient Philadelphia-DC karma: the last quarterback trade between the two teams involved Sonny Jurgenson, who certainly made the Iggles pay for that shit. Why the fucking fuck do you take a chance on a thing that potentially laden with karma?

So, even though the evidence is here, in writing, my official position is that the thing doesn't exist. It's the simplest conclusion. I don't know what day it is, or what time it is, but I'm asleep, and this doesn't exist. In fact, let's just wave a hand and apply it to everything in this post. Mmkay? Yeah, mmkay. Buh-bye.

Existifascism

My buddy bDr was suffering some bit of existential angst yesterday as he blogged most abstractly about some bit of abstract existential angst related to news I didn't see, most probably (as far as I can tell) some insignificant and patently ridiculous admission by an editorially right-wing newspaper that its advertising department is a pack of pinkos. So the fuck what? Petraeus is a self-serving jackass. We're gonna whine because we called someone a traitor when the same someones have been far more calling us traitors and far worse over far less for six fucking years? Blow me.

In fact, put so starkly, it's incomprehensible that this is worth gnashing over. So I'm not. I've got the moral high ground regardless of what sort of idiocy the Times spews. And while I'm not a big lover of MoveOn, their rhetoric hits close to the moral high ground--a height with which the other side cannot be accused of familiarity.

And now that I deconstruct a little better, it's clear to me that this must be the topic at hand, because otherwise I'd be reading about something more significant at some right-wing fucktard site, or my homeboy would be a lot less abstract. And so I must conclude: get a fucking grip, dood. A firm one. Use lotion if you have to. Non-climactic masturbation is a fucking tragedy no matter who does it. One need only look as far as Saturday's presidential radio address, in which the President tells us that Democrats are "irresponsible" for wanting to expand the SCHIP (subsidized health care for children in low-income families, if you're not as acronym-happy as my ilk) program.

This shit writes itself. They hate children, until it's time to put them in uniform to die uselessly, and we gotta worry? Only if we apologize for calling a thing the thing that it is, and that's not acceptable. Let us sit back, tell truths, using jarring language if'n we ought, and wait 16 months. And we must assume that, at that point, They will transition power peacefully.

It's like I said last week; kittens are dying, and fast. Days crush us. Bam-Bam is whining on the couch because he doesn't really want to be up this early (even though he done it to himself), and he wants me to fix it by cuddling with him as he watches some dumbass, previously long-forgotten kidvid that Mommy was dumb enough to reintroduce yesterday. While I'd like to write a little about DC United, which should be happy to have escaped the hellfires of Toyota Park with a point yesterday, I'm gonna go do the things that have to be done, and some that should be done: cuddling with my kid while he unwittingly becomes a Disneytool; going to work supervising the drones and fellating the customer (and going far too soon, having spent most of the weekend fellating my in-laws in the interest of family harmony); and, if the stars align correctly--and they will--making my date two days hence, the prom of middle-aged smartasses, the Prince of Existential Angst and the Prince of Existifascism darting out of suburbia to stand amongst the demonstrably insane in support of something that doesn't matter, but has far more right to be done than anything involving Fucktardia.

Special short cryptic notes section: Get a fucking room, felon-lovers. I don't care what continent it's on.

Add A Year

To this.

Mission Accomplished

Landrustan smart. Landrustan strong.

Yes, an attack through Canada was expected, although in their last, desperate gasp, the otherwise wily Egoslavs used an attack profile that was surprisingly asymetrical. Nonetheless, we can safely declare victory and pledge foreign aid to the Egoslavs, who have always been our friends. We have never been at war with Egoslavia.

While the Egoslavians maintain that the muddied origins of today's events rooted in a complimentary post about the musical taste of Our Leader, Landrustanians protested in droves, believing that the Knez had ridiculed Our Leader for owning no music recorded after 1982.

All that is irrelevant. The Egoslavs have always been our friends. We have never been at war with Egoslavia.

Join now in the National Anthem of Landrustan:

Landrustan is now looking for other blogocentric national groupings on which to declare meaningless wars in the interest of securing meaningless victories. Successful candidates will share an embarrassing insidery past with Landrustan and possess a detailed knowledge of trivia popular in Landrustan.

Take Cover, There's Gonna Be Collateral Damage

Fools! We have overcome our childhood fear of the Katebush with superior mind control imagery:





Now suffer the wrath of Susanna Hoffs!



Belinda Carlisle is warming up in the bullpen. We have WMDs and we're not afraid to use them.

Surrender Egoslavs

You have the stones to throw down in Minions' comments section? Screw you. You want a war, fight it in your blog like a normal person, damn you!

We will fight you on the beaches!



We will fight you in the cities!



We will enslav you in our fields, where you'll work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day!



Of course, we'll not forget to skewer your heads on a stake.

And we'll come for your uncool niece.



And if slavery isn't enough, we'll do experiments on your minds.



No, we really mean it.



We've got a search engine and an indomitable will. On your Knez, Egoslavs.

A Diplomatic Mission to Egoslavia

Dear Knez,



Be careful with that time machine.

Tipping Update

It occurred to me that I might need to do a little preemptive splaining after this morning's post about the governing apparati of the city of Boston becoming totally unhinged by a bunch of Lite-Brites.

Knocking out the most simplistic stuff first: no, moron, I'm not in favor of terrorism, I didn't say I was, and I didn't advocate being in favor of it. I'm not advocating rolling over for it. I'm not advocating being a dumbass when you see a brown paper package wrapped in twine ticking away in the airport lounge. I'm not advocating cutting funding to local and federal law enforcement. Or not increasing it.

I'm advocating having a fucking brain in your head. The only reason the war in Iraq is about terrorism is because having a large, but too-small body of troops in a country undergoing a civil war (one we precipitated--not that I advocate having left Sadaam Hussein in power, since we went all that way to kick his ass and stuff) is, in fact, an invitation to terrorism. The original reasons for invading had nothing to do with terrorism, and leaving Iraq now would neither alter that country's strife-ridden path to a government that may or may not like us nor bring more terrorists to our shores.

It's like leaving your laptop on a park bench and boggling when someone steals it. It's like putting wooden barrels of gasoline in an old, dried-out barn filled with straw, and leaving matches strewn about, and expecting no one to burn it down.

I'm also not disrespecting the 3,000 or so mostly Americans who died on 9/11. Your view may be that the math disrespects them--they were, after all, only 3,000 of the 150,000 or so people who died of unnecessarily violent causes in 2001. But that would not be a real objective view, and it would be pretty disrespectful to the other 147,000 or so victims of violence.

And I am most assuredly not suggesting that terrorism deaths are unpreventable. I'm just suggesting that they should be viewed in the appropriate risk context. The rationale for preventing terrorism is the rationale for preventing any unnecessary deaths. AIDS kills far fewer people than cancer. Compare the amount spent on research into each. It's exactly the same thing. Exactly the same.

I saw the video of the two accused, wherein they would only entertain questions about 70s hairstyles. I think they've got it just about exactly right. They are effectively charged with giving the city of Boston an opportunity to look really, really stupid. Their attitude is what it should be.

The howls from the right are not as loud as I might have thought, although they're just as mean. And the howls that try to sound like sensible howling are real knee-slappers. I heard a Fox correspondent guest-bloviating on my local pound-news-up-your-ass radio station today; her take was that the Feds believe Boston did the right thing. When asked how that reflected on the other nine cities that managed not to panic over Lite-Brites, she took a trip to the Waffle House, but tried to edge in an assertion that the Feds thought Boston was right and nine other cities were head-up-ass.

Uhm...wrong.

The Tipping Point

We all experience the accumulation of idiocy in various forms, affecting various aspects of our lives, many of them trivial, some of them less so. I decided a while back that the genus of idiocy relating to politics and worldviews was one I no longer wanted to significantly engage in this blog. The thoroughgoing blindness and pervasive dishonesty of the other side just saps my soul. Should somebody engage them? Sure, somebody should, but I'm mostly not going to, and in so deciding, I forgo the right to an opinion on who should.

Yesterday's little dustup in Boston, though, is not possible for me to ignore; it is the tipping point of my rage on this issue. The "war" on terrorism is unadulterated bullshit. If you are not a law enforcement or intelligence official and you go around worrying about terrorism, you are either a complete fucking idiot, you are seeking an excuse to impose your brand of fascism on our country, or you are psychologically disturbed and should seek some help. Multiple choice is plausible.

Let me be abundantly clear about this: if you see a small electronic sign, one with blinking lights in a pattern that appears to be flipping you off, and your first thought is that you are looking at an explosive device? You need competent medical help. Seriously. It is not possible for a sane and rational person to look at this:

and think, "I am looking at a terrorist bomb." It's just not possible.

It would be easy to write this off to the stick up Boston's ass. We are talking about the descendants of the folks who brought you the Salem Witch Trials. Today's news bears this out; the two poor bastards hired by Turner Broadcasting to carry out its nefarious plot of using art installations as advertising are facing arraignment in Boston-area courts this morning, and city officials are acting like the company--and its temporary starving-artist hires--are actual agents of Al Qaida.

Let's set the terrorism thing straight: you, personally, are not going to die of terrorism. It ain't gonna happen. Let's take a look at the things that will kill you.

The World Health Organization estimates (and by the way, I worked on the book pictured on the linked page, there) that, in 2002 (the most recent year for which WHO has published data), there were about 291 million people in the United States (please forgive my national chauvinism if you're one of Minions' 0.135 non-U.S. readers). A little over 24 million of them died. That's about .08 percent of Americans. Eight tenths of one percent, eight out of every one thousand Americans, died that year (the actual figure is 831.7 deaths per hundred thousand population--I'm even willing to put the worst possible face on it and call it a whole nine out of a thousand).

That's a slim chance of dying to begin with, on the low side of the middle of the spectrum, around 80th in the world (191 countries are listed), a death rate most similar to that of, oddly enough, France. Our national death rate in 2002 was not very far from the global death rate of 918.5 deaths per hundred thousand population.

Various countries in Africa approach or exceed a death rate that triples ours. Stop. Think. Triples. Around 2.7 percent of the denizens of Sierra Leone (not a particularly safe country for humans, I grant) died in 2002.

So, when it comes to dying (at all--we haven't even gotten to terrorism yet), you have a middling advantage in that you are an American. You would do a bit better in any of a number of countries--including, interestingly enough, Israel and Syria--and significantly better in a handful of countries, all of them (with the exception of Brunei) oil-rich countries that border Saudi Arabia.

Why did people die in 2002? WHO classifies deaths by cause. Globally, about 26 percent of deaths in 2002 owed to infectious diseases of various sorts, 12 percent to cancers, a whopping 29 percent to cardiovascular diseases, and smatterings of 4 and 5 percent attributable to various other causes; 58 percent of deaths owed to causes classified as noncommunicable diseases, which subsumes everything not infectious or injurious.

Only 9 percent of deaths in 2002 owed to injuries, and of those, two-thirds were accidental in nature--traffic accidents, falls, drownings, and the like. Another 17 percent of injury-caused deaths were from self-inflicted injuries, meaning suicide. Only 1 percent of deaths (and it's almost exactly 1 percent) resulted from violence or war.

As a citizen of the world, you had less than a 1-percent chance of dying in 2002. If you died, there was only a 1-percent chance that you died from any violent cause--including terrorism.

As an American, your advantage here really kicks in, unless you're me. 87.5 percent of U.S. deaths in 2002 were caused by noncommunicable diseases--23 percent by cancers, 38 percent by cardiovascular diseases, with smatterings attributable to other disease-based causes. In the U.S., only 6.3 percent of deaths were attributable to injury, and of those, around 70 percent were accidental.

Roughly 157,000 Americans died of violence-related causes in 2002, less than six-tenths of one percent of all deaths. In 2002, you were seven times more likely to die from an accidental cause--itself not all that likely--than from any violent cause, including terrorism. Even if we take a liberty with the numbers and add in 5,000 terrorism-related deaths from 2001 into the totals, the incidences don't change significantly.

Now let's talk about preventable deaths. Well over half of cancer and cardiovascular deaths can be prevented. Compare the amount spent on preventing deaths from noncommunicable diseases to the amount spent on the so-called war on terror. No rational person can look at these proportions and think them appropriate.

Like I said, if you're scared of terrorism, you're either stupid, lying, or deeply troubled. If you're deeply troubled, I truly hope you can get some help for that--it's not surprising that, given the government's propaganda campaign of the last five years, people's heads are twisted by this issue. But if you're stupid or lying--and if you have a fear of terrorism for any reason other than some psychological disorder, you're one or both--just shut the fucking fuck up and consider a fact or two.

Asshole-Riffic!

I lied. It wasn't my final statement on Iraq. I should have known better. I should have seen plainly that there was no way the continuing circus could fail to generate comedy gold. For instance:

Bush Chides Iraq Over Recent Executions

See what I mean?

But let's go to the videotape.

"I was disappointed and felt like they fumbled the — particularly the Saddam Hussein execution," the president said in an interview with PBS' Jim Lehrer.

Uhm...excuse me? He's not really dead?

"It basically says to people, `Look, you conducted a trial and gave Saddam justice that he didn't give to others. But then, when it came to execute him, it looked like it was kind of a revenge killing,'" the president said.

Uhm...excuse me? Executing Sadaam wasn't revenge? What, then, pray, was the fucking point? Deterrence?

"It makes it harder for me to make the case to the American people that this is a government that does want to unify the country and move forward," Bush said.

Ah. The nub of the problem. It made you look bad.

As the president pressed the case for his troop additions, there were ugly reminders from Iraq of the tough job ahead. More than 100 people died in several attacks on predominantly Shiite areas, including an explosion outside a Baghdad university that killed at least 65 people and a blast at a marketplace for used motorcycles. The United Nations, meanwhile, said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died last year in sectarian violence.

Damned liberal media. Pointing out facts and shit. Oh, wait, it came from AP. It's all lies anyway.

Apologies to Sadly, No! for broad style expropriation.

My Final Statement on Iraq

Okay, probably not. But it makes me tired, the obviousness of the proposition that Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism, which is itself a small problem best dealt with by properly funded and well-supported law enforcement agencies. It makes me tired, these psychopathic morons--many of them constituting the mainstream media--who try to convince me that I, a citizen of the most powerful nation on Earth, have something to fear besides fear itself. It makes me tired, these shameless braying fascists who think that I am the enemy because I disagree.

And so here, courtesy of Lawyers, Guns, and Money, are the facts about our invasion of Iraq:

1. What are the consequences of America losing a war?

The same as the consequences of any other country losing a war, only far less so since the war was fought far away for reasons tangential to genuine US security interests.

2. What will it do to our position in the world?

The dreadful defeat will leave the US the most powerful country in the world.

3. What will it do to our national psyche?

It may be marginally more difficult for the New Republic to gin up support for the next idiotic foreign adventure.

4. What will it do to the people who fought in the war?

More of them will be alive, and will enjoy the full use of their limbs and brains.

Are we clear here? Feel free to exercise your constitutional right to tell me that I love terrorists. Do not be surprised when I exercise my constitutional right to tell you that you are a deluded fuckwit.

Let Me Get This Straight

Shitting the bed isn't working. So we're going to take half a bottle of Ex-Lax, tie ourselves to the bed, and increase the volume? Riiiiiight.

Quagmire: Great name for a Family Guy character. Lousy concept for nation-building. Which, uhm, we don't do. Except when we do.

Note to morons: No, I didn't just equate U.S. troops to feces. Just, y'know, as a prophylactic against your most likely response to metaphor. Now shut up and go join the military, and don't pretend for a second that the left--which doesn't support the war and doesn't agree that terrorism merits a military response--is susceptible to your lame-ass attempts to turn back the chickenhawk argument. Enjoy your shit bath.

In other news, shitting the bed isn't working so well for the Terrapins, either. It is really difficult to despise the team that is your team. Unconscionably difficult, in fact. It's sad, but this team is doomed until the last player who ever met John Gilchrist skies out of College Park. This year's senior class is haunted by that ghost (and its progeny). Make like Chrissy Mac, MJ. Blow your knee again, DJ. Take your elbows to Italy, Ekene. And you, Shaggy? Just slump over, and try not to damage the floor when you hit it. Assuming you're capable of hitting the floor by simply falling down. Video evidence is inconclusive.

There are them what don't believe me, but I say this to you now: two more NCAA tournaments will occur before the Maryland Terrapins grace the Big Dance again.

And remember: the Wii is just cute as a button. Just touch it anywhere and you'll have Fun!

Vroom! Vroom!

Words

Still, people think I have a blog. Herewith is some bulletized sop for those unfortunate believers.

• Yeah. Sure. Christmas. Whatthefuckever.
• Yeah. Sure. Gerald Ford. Whatthefuckever. See blackDogred, who has it pretty much right. You say "harmless," I say "perpetuated a culture of corruption while pretending he was being statesmanlike." You say "decent," I say "abused the presidential pardon power in the name of phony faith-healing." You say "statesman," I say "no, he really did play too much football without a helmet." I do say thank you for the national day of mourning, however. Oddly enough, I don't remember getting one of those for Richard Nixon.
• Yeah. Sure. Bowl games. Whatthefuckever. Purdue 23, Maryland 19. No, I won't let it the fuck go.
• Yeah. Sure. NFL. Whatthefuckever. Go Titians.
• Yeah. Sure. Iraq. Whatthefuckever. Will hanging Sadaam Hussein make everyone just shut the fucking fuck up? How about "please"? C'mon. It'd be statesmanlike. Seriously.

A happy forthcoming year to you and all of those for whom you give a fuck.

So Very Tired

I got nothin'. I just got nothin'. The blogosphere is stuck in ruts; yes, Bush is a crapweasel, and the war is a bad thing. There is a very good post about the war at Daily Kos today; it's a different look at the tragedies of our overseas adventure. Other than the occasional fresh perspective such as this one, the dialogue about the war has degenerated into something that feels very tiresome. I'm not saying that people shouldn't blog about the war; I'm just saying that I grow weary of it, and I'm mostly not gonna play.

I updated the links to your right with some sites I visit. I mostly did this because I'm tired of linking to them through Sasha and bDr, whose links I was using more than my own. bDr still has some cool soccer links that I haven't adopted, mostly because I haven't sorted through all of them yet to see which ones hit my g-spot and which don't. I'll update that more later.

Also joining the friends list is Mr. Critic, a real-life friend who has since moved on to an alternate reality. Linking to his site makes it feel as though he's still two doors down the hallway, rather than across the river at Save the World's spiritual nonprofit sibling, Shag the Dirt. Mr. Critic is a rarity in my personal Internet experience; he's a guy who uses his real name on the Internet. You won't see me (Orville Fascesblogger), Sasha (Leopida Commuworthy), or bDr (Shecky Eskanfarbadov) having the balls to do that. Mr. Critic suffers from several critical ailments, most notably that he is a fan of the Green Bay Packers, but he has good taste in haircuts, physique, and friends, and it appears that his farts do not smell, at least not in a particularly noisome way. His blog is pretty Packers-centric, but it was once voted third-best Packers blog ev-ahr (by his family), and first-best Packers blog written in a non-cheese-producing state by a metrosexual. Mr. Critic may or may not discover that I have linked to him, and may or may not read this blog.

It's So Exhausting

What does the other side think passes for logic? It is, of course, awful that two PFCs were brutally murdered in Iraq. No one wishes that on any of our troops.

But do these people understand that when you go to war, there are consequences? That when a country that lives under the rule of law explicitly rejects international conventions in a time of conflict, it's not exactly reality-based to expect the other side--regardless of the semantic definition of the conflict--to observe the same conventions? Especially when you have, in theory, gone to conflict to make the other side live under the rule of law?

Sigh.

Today's News...WTF Do You Mean, Today?

Woot. We killed us one a them Bad Brown People. U!S!A!

Mission accomplished, right?

WTF do you mean, no?

Oh, I see. It's about exterminating all Bad Brown People, in a decidedly non-racist way. Gotcha. So it doesn't matter that we killed one particular Bad Brown Person, right?

WTF do you mean, "no" and I "hate our troops" for asking? Can't you fucking people make any fucking sense whatsoever?

And WTF do you mean, "no" and you're not hatin' on all Brown People? How can I tell them apart? By profiling? But...but...they all fit the same profile, don't they? Yes? Jesus. Can't you fucking people make any fucking sense whatsoever?

Dog knows what directions asshat memery will take over the next 24 hours. I'm sure my above imaginary conversation with an imaginary nonentity doesn't even scrape the surface of the stupid and hateful nonsense we're sure to see in the blogosphere before the sun next sets (on the East Coast, the only place the rising and falling of the sun matters, of course).

Here's what to think: the military did something right. Lots of people in the military do things right every fucking day. Some of them don't. Sometimes they don't do it right, in a spectacularly impactful way.

Here's what else to think: kill a terrorist and make 10 more. And do nothing about the rates of unnecessary deaths from other causes, here and around the world, rates that dwarf the number of people killed by terrorist acts. Focus your entire national policy around killing terrorists, in the interest of pumping up Mister Jingo, and do worse than nothing about far more workable problems.

Oh, and you should also think that Ann Coulter is seriously pathetic, but I just can't imagine that's worth a whole lot of Thinking Cap, there.

June 6

Much will be made in the blogosphere today of comparisons between events and currents 62 years ago and those of the here/now. All of them are crap. There's no parallel at all, except to the extent that then, as now, our military was called upon to do violence. Honor your fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers--those whose generation dropped everything to go fight the true face of evil.

Why was that a good war? I'm certainly invested in the notion that it was, and that it was, in all likelihood, the last good war. It's surely the last war about which there's any certainty as to the rightness of our country's actions and choices. Those who argue that evil is evil, in any of its forms, and who would compare the fundamental, world-sweeping evil of Nazism to the evil of today are missing a point of scale.

It is hyperbole to suggest that terror looms as the same kind of threat to our way of life as did Nazism. Globally, more infants die needlessly in a day--every day--than the number of people who died in the horrors of 9/11. Between 40 million and 60 million people were consumed by World War II, depending on whose figures you believe. The scale of the threat of terrorism is miniscule by comparison.

That doesn't make terrorism right, or something to be ignored; it means what it says, that the threat needs to be viewed in scale. More people died in auto accidents in 2001 than died in the World Trade Center. It may be a hard idea to confront, but by way of scale, terrorism is a pretty mundane threat.

This matter of scale tends to diminish the war metaphor, but more importantly, I think (and certainly today), it diminishes other--real--wars, and it's a bit of an insult to those sacrificed in them. Like World War II, which took a significant step toward ending, 62 years ago today (I'll spare you here my usual argument about the suffering of the Russian people in making a more significant contribution toward bringing about that end).

Does this itself diminish the contributions of those Americans who've died or otherwise suffered grievously in Afghanistan and Iraq? Of course not. They are brave people who signed on to serve their countries and followed the orders they were given in doing so. It doesn't demean them to suggest that their political leadership was flawed; in fact, it's a compliment to their patriotism and professionalism.

Today should be a day for contemplating the deeds of the generation that won World War II. Please don't spoil it by comparing our invasion of Iraq to the deeds done by those magnificent men and women.

Brief Substance

No, it's not a post about cotton.

However, as I get down to it, I find I still have nothing of substance to say. I could go on extended rants about Al Gore, the fascists' treatment of the doings at Haditha, the idiocy of comparing Harry Reid's acceptance of boxing tickets to anything resembling actual corruption, or David Broder's obsession with burying his sniffer in Hillary's panties. All of these are worthy targets, but I must debunk them as things I'm capable of competently addressing, to wit:

• Of course Al Gore's been sodomized by the media. He's smarter than they are. And his obsessive sorta personality isn't helping him any when it comes to dodging mockery. But when so many people have it so very, very wrong, my little Landru voice isn't going to make a dent in it. Besides, to do the job properly, I'd have to revisit a topic I've forsworn: Tucker Carlson. Last year's Tucker obsession led me down the road to perdition. I'm not going back, and you can't make me.
• Yes, bad things happened at Haditha. The military justice framework is taking care of it. It took them a while. Saying any of those things does not evidence a disrespect for the military. Accusing a Marine-veteran member of Congress of disrespect for the military for calling attention to the issue is rank propaganda in the finest traditions of Goebbels and McCarthy. Shut the fuck up. Of course, to do this job properly, I'd have to revisit that whole Our Lady of the Concentration Camps thing, and I'm just frightfully done with that there.
• Golly. Harry Reid accepted boxing tickets, then voted against the interests of the people who provided them? Hang him high.
• As for Broder, shouldn't he be off somewhere having a circle jerk with his fellow lovers of Bushcock, like Richard Cohen? Shut the fuck up, Broder.

See? Everyone else does it better than I do. And you're really tired of hearing me piss and moan about fascist squawkboxes, when you can go read other people doing it more politely.

Besides, I'm hungry.

Only A Matter of Time

First on the scene in truth and civility, your correspondent and mine, Our Lady of the Concentration Camps managed to post this morning a really low-quality Photoshop superimposing the face of her apparently fraudulent hero, J-Mac (Invalidator of All Anti-War Sentiment!), over the famous 70s picture of Senator Kerry testifying against the war.

Sigh. Why do you make me keep doing this, Mrs. Malkin? I mean, I'm going to have to start autotexting this shit.

Fuck you, you lying, passive-aggressive, hypocritical, evil, propagandizing, fact-ignoring, racist, ping-pong-ball-queefing blogslut.

What, you want something that's not about Our Lady, but about the issue?

Sure, I'll give it to you. Comparing apparently lying scum like The Invalidator (who, it seems, didn't serve and just likes dressing up in military stuff) to a man who actually served, and won medals for his wounds (shut the fuck up--every lie anyone made up about Senator Kerry's war wounds has been roundly refuted) and for his service under fire (same--just shut the fuck up, liars), is as uncivil, untruthful, and Goebbelsriffic as it gets. The case makes itself, for anyone with a modicum of literacy and an IQ greater than that of wet cardboard.

And that? Was about as much civility as I could manage. Fuck off, Malkin, you cunt.