Archives for January 2006

I wonder if the annual speech would be any better–more inspirational, or whatever–if it was titled The State of America. Do you grasp the distinction?

Anyway, I don’t know if I can bear to listen to it. Of course, my only reason for doing so would be to yell at the TV a few times. I don’t know if I can even count on 5 or 10 minutes of decent inspirational stuff (in so many words: kill many terrorists). Of course, the rest of the speech will be the standard drivel about how you are now going to be able to live at even more of the expense of your neighbors, and everyone else.

You are also likely to hear reference to this particular bit of presidential lunacy, as described by Jeff Jacoby:

Some of that delusion was on display at the White House on Thursday,
when President George Bush painted the Palestinian election as a
"healthy" and "interesting" exercise in civic reform:

"Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo," Bush explained.
"The people are demanding honest government. The people want services.
They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which
they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare. And so
the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the
Palestinian territories…. There’s something healthy about a system
that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting."

Please, Mr. President. If a slate of neo-Nazi skinheads swept to power
in a European election, would you say that the voters were seeking
"honest government" and "services"? Palestinians are not stupid, and it
insults their intelligence to pretend that when they vote to empower a genocidal organization with a platform straight out of Mein Kampf, what they’re really after is better healthcare. Islamist extremism isn’t needed to fix Palestinian hospitals any more than Fascism was needed to make Italian trains run on time
in the 1920s. If Palestinians turned out en masse to elect a party that
unapologetically stands for hatred and mass murder, it’s a safe bet
that the hatred and mass murder had something to do with the turnout.

By the same token, Hamas’s new duties are not going to turn it into a
moderate group of diligent civil servants. When violent Islamists win
political power, their brutality and zealotry do not diminish. (See
"Khomeini, Ayatollah" and "Taliban, Afghan"). The notion that Hamas now
has "a choice to make" is just another example of the delusional
thinking that is so pervasive when it comes to the Palestinian
Authority.

Well, if this doesn’t bolster my bald and unequivocal assertion that the "majority" in virtually any vote can usually be counted on to be a bunch of damned morons, well, then, I don’t know what would.

So, go ahead here and vote.

(Tip: Hit & Run)

Time to get out the sliderules, conversion charts, scientific calculators, financial calculators, efficiency benchmark data tables, Excel spreadsheets, and all other whotnot.

Members of the Quartet — the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia — are expected to release a statement after their meeting in London to discuss whether isolating Hamas politically and financially is the best policy.

I can pretty much guarantee that the "statement" will not answer the most fundamental question, which is: "best policy" for whom and for what?

Do you recall my favorite quote from the film The Conspiracy?

"It made me distrust the language."

That was in reference to the study of the law. It came on the heals of a discussion concerning the "evacuation" of Jews, such being an euphemism for gassing and incinerating them at the efficient rate of 2,500 per hour (60,000 per day).

The Wannsee Conference was primarily an affair designed to secure allegiance and accord for the extermination of Jews from key figures in the German government. The method by which this was accomplished was appeal after appeal to legal principles.

With that in mind, stuff like this doesn’t sound too-far-fetched at all.

"It’s hard for a parent to compete with so many ads making junk food
fun and cool," Sherri Carlson, a mother of three who would be a
plaintiff in a lawsuit, told reporters. "Although I have a strict
policy against junk cereals in my house … this doesn’t stop my
children from asking me for them, especially after seeing enticing ads."

Yep. You can now sue because your kids ask you to buy them something, and get the pimps and whores in the media to swoon over you like some strung-out hooker in the Tenderloin offering tricks for a tenner.

(link: Hit & Run)

I believe that the most profound aspect of my continuing pursuit to be an increasingly competent human being is that over the last 15 years I have come to the point where I can no longer fathom–and barely tolerate, anymore–how it is that people can be so submissive to various self-proclaimed authorities.

Don’t get me wrong. Authority can be perfectly valid. Parents have authority over their children. Adults, to some extent, possess valid authority over all children in certain contexts. And then there are various forms of authority provided by mutual consent (employee/employer; teacher/student; etc.).

But I look around today, and I swear to God that I see almost no adults anymore. It seems to me that virtually everyone in the world is seeking some authority somewhere to tell them what to do about just about everything. Jesus Christ already; Grow Up, people.

Now here’s a couple of examples of what I’m talking about. I have two links, both of which go into some detail about what sorts of sexual practices are allowed or not allowed on the part of religious practitioners. There’s also a juxtaposition. Apparently, anal sex between a married couple is "undesirable" but ultimately OK, according to primitive Muslim clerics. On the other hand, official doctrine of the enlightened Catholic Church holds that a wife giving her husband a hummer is a "serious sin." Go figure.

Of course, from my perspective, none of it is particularly absurd and it’s completely logical given the premises people accept. You have to understand what it’s about. It’s about establishing authority, obedience, deference in all matters–even the most private and personal. Accordingly, the only real essential is to forbid something that lots of people will find pleasure in doing. And, of course, many will do it anyway, feel guilty, and you’ve got clay in your hands. Yea, I’ve posted about all this before–recently, even. It’s so formulaic. So obvious. Yet billions of people all over the world fall for it every day, over and over.

What’s absurd is that people think that they need any of this. They don’t. They don’t need one goddamned jot of it. I mean, it is so amazingly ridiculous to me that living, breathing human beings can actually bring themselves to ask some parasite in flowing robes, some bureaubot, some politician, some guru, some elite professor–or Oprah–what they should do and how they should live their lives. How they should fuck, for Christ’s sake.

Jesus. I live in a goddamed world populated by the equivalent of billions of shy and introverted tweenage girls with "self-esteem issues."

(Links: Hit & Run; To the People)