2.17.2003
"hitchhiker's guide" is a good book, I have heard, but I have yet to read it. I should pick it up. I liked the president quote... Kind of a similar thought is the guy who won a medal for humility and then got it taken away because he wore it. :)
I also heard an interesting thought somewhere, that the political world is backwards. Politicians have the power to blow up the world and kill us all at the push of a button. It should be reversed. All of their constituents should have a button that blows up their politician. Then things would go better...:)
Anyhow, on to more discussion.
I stand by my statement of losing citizens in a war and in a terrorist attack. There is a bent in conspiracy theory circles to blame everything bad that happens in the world on whatever power structure is in place at the moment. Josh Morgan et al. was great for this. It just depends on your outlook. Ruby Ridge was the evil government killing its own law abiding citizens. JFK has been shot by everyone from the mob to the commies to space aliens. 9-11 has been talked of as a Zionist plot to push the US into war against the Arabs or as a political move to bolster support for the administration. I don't buy most or nearly all of it. 9-11 was simply too big to keep under wraps as a conspiracy. There is simply no way that it can be contained. I think that the administration may or may not be using it to their advantage, but that is to be expected to pass legislation they think is right. What, are they going to use it to their DISadvantage?
I was thinking about media coverage as well... I think that the media can be described as a limiting form of an equation. Large scale phenomena exist and are largely covered correctly by the media. By this I mean that Iraq actually exists as a country, it is winter right now in the northern hemisphere, and summer in the south, and a list of other blatantly obvious and externally verifiable facts. But small scale phenomena are largely up for interpretation. You can get 10 journalists in the same situation and there will be 10 different takes on what happened. Some of this is unavoidable, but some is orchestrated. The smaller the scale, the more the media can distort it. It just depends on the scale. Sort of a Heisenberg Principle for current events.
The phrases of "violence begets violence" and "killing for peace is like fucking for virginity", while appearing on the surface to be true, do not necessarily hold up in practice.
I cite historical examples for this. I mentioned before wars against the British, Germans and Japanese turned old enemies into new friends because of the treatment after the war. Internally the US held together after the Civil War because of all the efforts of Reconstruction, pardoning officers and soldiers, etc. Like I said before, I think that the power vacuum left behind a military action breeds violence. Or at least repression. The Taliban were an example of this.
Also, for the other side, peaceful actions do not necessarily breed peace. Indeed, peaceful actions are usually taken advantage of. During the Clinton era, peace attempts were made in good faith with a long list of people that have since backfired. Peace in Israel fell apart. The North Korean Agreed Framework fell apart. We did not act in cases where we should have, such as a 1994 coup against Hussein that would have changed power in Iraq without large-scale US troop involvement. I think that the scale of things needs to be taken into account, as well. If you fight with your next door neighbor, they will fight back. But there is a nonlinearity when you start to look internationally. I am still working out the dynamics of WHY things work as they do, so I can't really give a coherent answer yet on that, but I just see that historically they do work like that. I think that because of this, nation building is a very good and achievable endeavour.
The thing I don't understand is the idea that the 9-11 attack was just an isolated incident. There have been a string of incidents stretching back to the 70's and before. Lebanon, the 1993 Trade Center bombing, the Kenyan Embassy bombing, the USS Cole attack... none of them really sank in and made us realize who we are dealing with, until 9-11. I believe, and not just because the government says so, that there will be more. I particularly think of suicide bombings and shooting down airliners on takeoff and landing as being the next big threats. I could be wrong, but it just surprises me that there haven't been more attempts at those. We are fighting an enemy that really does hate us. I don't think we as Westerners realize the depth of the hatred that we are hated with. We are indifferent about this, to our detriment.
Anyhow, that is my piece for the moment. I have to get going... I am getting my graduate school application ready to go and I need to work on that. Graduating is a scary proposition. So is grad school for that matter. Remote Sensing Geophysics? Electrical and Computer Engineering? Sweeping the floor at McDonalds?
What to do?
I also heard an interesting thought somewhere, that the political world is backwards. Politicians have the power to blow up the world and kill us all at the push of a button. It should be reversed. All of their constituents should have a button that blows up their politician. Then things would go better...:)
Anyhow, on to more discussion.
I stand by my statement of losing citizens in a war and in a terrorist attack. There is a bent in conspiracy theory circles to blame everything bad that happens in the world on whatever power structure is in place at the moment. Josh Morgan et al. was great for this. It just depends on your outlook. Ruby Ridge was the evil government killing its own law abiding citizens. JFK has been shot by everyone from the mob to the commies to space aliens. 9-11 has been talked of as a Zionist plot to push the US into war against the Arabs or as a political move to bolster support for the administration. I don't buy most or nearly all of it. 9-11 was simply too big to keep under wraps as a conspiracy. There is simply no way that it can be contained. I think that the administration may or may not be using it to their advantage, but that is to be expected to pass legislation they think is right. What, are they going to use it to their DISadvantage?
I was thinking about media coverage as well... I think that the media can be described as a limiting form of an equation. Large scale phenomena exist and are largely covered correctly by the media. By this I mean that Iraq actually exists as a country, it is winter right now in the northern hemisphere, and summer in the south, and a list of other blatantly obvious and externally verifiable facts. But small scale phenomena are largely up for interpretation. You can get 10 journalists in the same situation and there will be 10 different takes on what happened. Some of this is unavoidable, but some is orchestrated. The smaller the scale, the more the media can distort it. It just depends on the scale. Sort of a Heisenberg Principle for current events.
The phrases of "violence begets violence" and "killing for peace is like fucking for virginity", while appearing on the surface to be true, do not necessarily hold up in practice.
I cite historical examples for this. I mentioned before wars against the British, Germans and Japanese turned old enemies into new friends because of the treatment after the war. Internally the US held together after the Civil War because of all the efforts of Reconstruction, pardoning officers and soldiers, etc. Like I said before, I think that the power vacuum left behind a military action breeds violence. Or at least repression. The Taliban were an example of this.
Also, for the other side, peaceful actions do not necessarily breed peace. Indeed, peaceful actions are usually taken advantage of. During the Clinton era, peace attempts were made in good faith with a long list of people that have since backfired. Peace in Israel fell apart. The North Korean Agreed Framework fell apart. We did not act in cases where we should have, such as a 1994 coup against Hussein that would have changed power in Iraq without large-scale US troop involvement. I think that the scale of things needs to be taken into account, as well. If you fight with your next door neighbor, they will fight back. But there is a nonlinearity when you start to look internationally. I am still working out the dynamics of WHY things work as they do, so I can't really give a coherent answer yet on that, but I just see that historically they do work like that. I think that because of this, nation building is a very good and achievable endeavour.
The thing I don't understand is the idea that the 9-11 attack was just an isolated incident. There have been a string of incidents stretching back to the 70's and before. Lebanon, the 1993 Trade Center bombing, the Kenyan Embassy bombing, the USS Cole attack... none of them really sank in and made us realize who we are dealing with, until 9-11. I believe, and not just because the government says so, that there will be more. I particularly think of suicide bombings and shooting down airliners on takeoff and landing as being the next big threats. I could be wrong, but it just surprises me that there haven't been more attempts at those. We are fighting an enemy that really does hate us. I don't think we as Westerners realize the depth of the hatred that we are hated with. We are indifferent about this, to our detriment.
Anyhow, that is my piece for the moment. I have to get going... I am getting my graduate school application ready to go and I need to work on that. Graduating is a scary proposition. So is grad school for that matter. Remote Sensing Geophysics? Electrical and Computer Engineering? Sweeping the floor at McDonalds?
What to do?
< 14:25 >< /j >
