"Culture"

I turned on the TV the other day. Started with FOX. A handsome, young, black man was the guest of conservative political commentator Sean Hannity. He was identified as “Democrat Strategist.” Hannity was becoming rude and blustery, talking over the top of his guest. I actually wanted to hear what the Democrat Strategist had to say, but it was obvious that Hannity did not. I can’t abide people who interrupt and cut another off; it’s the equivalent of an emotional assault. Disgusted, I flipped.

On a liberal channel, political commentator Bill Mayer was snarling and launching F-bombs in every direction. I have no idea what his message was, as I could not separate it from the offensive language and manner. When did saying the F-word on TV become okay? Moving on.

Honey Boo-Boo’s obese mom was upset about the pet piglet squealing for breakfast at 5:30 a.m. Seriously – a pet PIG kept in a toddler’s playpen, in the house. Click. We have dirty, drunk rednecks making moonshine on some show about the hillbilly lifestyle. Click.

A man has brought his great-grandfather’s military uniform jacket to the pawn shop. An expert was brought in to analyze it – 1902, U.S. Army, a red stripe for artillery, a cream stripe for actual combat, expert surmised had to be the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American War, insignia intact. The shop owner offered $200, and the other man’s face fell. The “pawn star” gave the man a combative, hard look, and said “it’s missing the belt.” Silently, I begged the other man to pick up the jacket of his forefather (who survived combat and was lucky enough to come home and have a family so the man could eventually be born and live his stoopid life) and walk out of the den of the mercenary merchants. I couldn’t bear to see the disappointing outcome. Click.

A show titled “Ridiculousness,” a montage of video clips of the stoopidest people alive smashing their faces into bicycle seats, fences, board ramps. Pregnant teenagers. Shrewish middle-aged women in jewels and thick makeup talking about sex. COPs chasing and busting druggies with fried brains driving haphazardly down the street. A skinny woman with blue hair pulls down her pants to bare her ass for the tattoo artist. The camera zooms in. There were drug interventions, alcohol interventions, over-eating interventions, hoarders, cheaters – everyone crying.

Please tell me when the rednecks, white trash, toothless hillbillies, shysters, mentally deficient, sex-obsessed, disgusting, drug-addled, criminal, and sick became the stars of TV? This is what we glorify and hold up as worthy of our attention, time, money? We don’t value the intelligent, the creative, the brave, honest, hard-working, MORAL – I guess that’s boring.

Do I need to connect the dots? Is our art reflecting us, or are we reflecting our art? Whichever, it’s apparent what we value. We love how sick we’ve become. I felt as if my soul had been sucked out of my body. How about some local news?

I guess another child committed suicide in my fair city today because I saw school administrators and fellow students insisting he was not bullied, representatives from parent grief groups, the suicide hotline people, a psychiatrist urging every parent to talk to his child tonight! I can only assume that a child committed suicide (the “real” news) based on all this other “coverage.” This is what the newspeople do when they’re not sure about the real news themselves.

Someday I wish to live in a house with no TV. I’ll cook and garden and dust, and the Anti-Culture will not be allowed in to poison my soul. No, I have a better wish! I get my own TV show, so I can have the forum to scream at the top of my lungs for everyone to STOP IT. “You, get yourself to rehab, and you, pull up your pants, and you! Read a book!” Truly I’ve never seen it so bad. Is this what the decay of society looks like?

World Piece

I went to a Town Hall lecture today, because I have season tickets. There were other speakers in coming months more exciting, frankly. This was Martha Raddatz, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent for ABC News, speaking on Hot Spots. Big Woop. I’m disappointed in the direction of TV journalism these days, not sure she has anything to say I have the time to listen to. Then she didn’t show up.

She sent her husband to us while she went to the Middle East. A Tom Gjelton, with NPR’s national security unit. Okay. Even better, ha. Hate NPR with their nasal, snotty British accents, it’s become an unbalanced forum for the whiny who want government to tell all of us what to do. Is he a real journalist or another emotionally-manipulating, personally biased, sensationalistic, primping poser?

I ended up enjoying his presentation immensely, and wanted to pass along the discussion points to friends. He never said the words Republican and Democrat, just laid out all the angles, and I think it was brilliant – the only way meaningful debate can happen without the gotcha-aha-inflammatory freak show.

I’m very concerned about the costly wars, and what we are trying to do “over there.” I am THE libertarian isolationist, screw ‘em all, I say. I appreciated that this guy brought some new information for me to consider.

Let’s Make Sense of the Middle East (Or Try)

Currently violent, anti-American demonstrations are popping up all over the region, starting with Libya on the 9/11 anniversary which resulted in the death of our ambassador, then Egypt and Tunisia, up to today when students stormed through barricades in Pakistan. Why?

The Obama administration and the UN lady Rice (UN = a very unfunny joke), insist that the anger is in response to some anti-Muslim video made by a Coptic Christian living in California (Coptic means Egyptian). (If he’s being described as “Coptic,” that means he’s from Egypt, happens to be a Christian, now lives in California? How did he get here? Never mind, don’t ask too many questions because actually, they’re irrelevant. We all know this video is a trigger, a tool, a whistle used to call the dogs to dinner…) (Can’t you just picture this guy, though? He’s dark-skinned, wearing Aviators, black greasy hair, throwing wads of cash around, speaking in a Borat dialect, “I to make my Epic Movie in Hollywood! Action!”)

Mr. Journalist says “Now it appears Al Qaeda was involved.” No way! Maybe all the everyday normal poor people of Libya do bring their personal RPGs to peaceful street demonstrations in front of the embassy…and then split into highly organized platoons to attack and run over the building. (Now there’s evidence of contact between the demonstrators and Al Qaeda.) (By the way, we will shelf my annoyance until later at Obama’s administration and its inability to be straight with us about anything, as if we don’t matter enough to be given information, insulting.) He continues “especially when you consider the context of the last two years.”

I licked my lips. Finally! Someone is going to explain Arab Spring to me, and what was reeeeally going on over there. He says governments fell, new governments fought for power, destabilizing an already unstable region. The people in that part of the world wanted to throw over their dictatorship governments. Yeah, yeah, go on.

Egypt
He described a group of soccer fans/hooligans who love any chance to rumble with the police. These are the same guys who knocked Mubarak (the former president now dying in the hospital) from power, BY fighting with his police force. Same haters, hating on each other, just a different week. They just LOVE to fight.

And remember when you thought all those people wanted to overthrow their evil despot governments so they could demand democracy, a government of the people, for the people, by the people? No. They have never wanted democracy. The overwhelming popular feeling is they want an ISLAMIC government, they’re just fussing over how MUCH of an Islamic government…well, that’s a kick in the pants, right? The radical Islamists want a whole bunch of Islam in their government; the moderate Islamists want just a dash. But, they are all Islamists. (There are a few pro-Western-Democracy proponents yelling “Help us!” They are NOT the majority.)

The moderates in this scenario are actually the Muslim Brotherhood (sinister name, regardless, these are the good guys or errrr, the better guys), and they were the winners in the power struggle after Mubarak stepped down. (Mubarak was sorta our buddy, his wife is pretty forward-thinking, comparatively speaking…deposing Mubarak was a DEFEAT for us, a blow against America.) Soooo, the radicals are ANXIOUS to attack the new government and the new president from the moderate Muslim Brotherhood for his “ties with America” because you know, Hate For America is the stick by which to measure all things Muslim.

Libya
Boy, were we excited when the people rose up to trash talk and shake their fist at Gaddafi, our longtime favorite Looney-tunes Middle East dictator. Well, he’s dead now, and the new government is too weak to deal with their crazies, and those crazies were an important part of the revolution. A lot of the crazies are in the hard-line militia (doesn’t that ring a bell – post World War I Germany), and they were behind the attack in Benghazi that took our ambassador’s life. He was killed by the crazies since he was working to help strengthen the weak government. It is amazing to me that this guy was only in his post 3 MONTHS…think about that. On the job for three months. What an unlucky SOB. Is a replacement in mind?

The question that begs to be asked is: Why the lack of security? Where was the breakdown? Did we trust some people we should not have trusted, eh? I’ve read we had a LIBYAN security team guarding the consulate. Hmm. And when Americans were moved to safer locations, the “demonstrators” knew the locations of the safe houses, and “demonstrated” there next. Hmm. And the rescue squad sent in to save the survivors consisted of EIGHT military and former military personnel. Eight? For a mob? Hmm. (Also, the fact that it happened in Benghazi has some significance, due to a previous occurrence during Arab Spring, it’s a statement full of political meaning.)

Moving on. Let’s examine this idea about “Muslim outrage in response to a cheap video.” High-ranking Muslims of the world insist that others respect their religion, demanding tolerance and sensitivity WHILE they say things like: Christianity is a reeking corpse, Jews are descendants of apes and pigs, Jews are responsible for all evil and harm in the world, if we could just wipe those Jews out, we would have peace, we need to spill their blood, praise jihad, blah-blah-blah. I think I see a double standard here. Maybe this is their idea of tolerance for other religions. And they’re pissed about a video?

Syria
On to that garden spot of the Mediterranean, Syria. Mr. Journalist described it as particularly vexing, lol. Here we have an uprising of the people to overthrow their government led by al-Assad (who looks exactly like I imagined a pencil-necked geek), who is quite willing to slaughter his own people revolting against him. The death count is up to 20,000. He’s committing all sorts of Crimes Against Humanity, and many demand we DO SOMETHING. (Because that’s what we do, we do something, and we have the notion that our humanity demands we do a lot of somethings. Can you turn your ahead away from atrocities?)

Many are trying to liken Syria to Bosnia in the 90s, in which the good guys and bad guys were very apparent. The bad guys were the ones doing the ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape. Very clear, right. And the world stood by and did nothing. The point being, the bad guys and good guys are clearly delineated in Syria, and we should not stand by and do nothing while human depravation is happening.

Mr. Journalist disagrees. We don’t know enough about the Syrian rebels being mowed down by al-Assad. Actually, Al Qaeda is in with the rebels, identified by their trademark tactic – suicide bombers. He said this conflict is not about democracy, either. What is it about? It’s a fight between the two branches of Islam – the Sunnis and the Shiites. Oh, hell, here we go again. Remember the Sunnis are all about “our new leader can be a random dude in the tribe,” while the Shiites are like “no, our leader can only be from the family of the prophet Muhammad even if he is the nephew of the second cousin or whatever.” And we Americans are like “who gives a shit?” But, these people do, so much they have branched off like Baptists and Catholics under the big ol’ umbrella of Christianity. Who can drink? Who can dance? Who can drink while dancing? I digress.

So, this is the part that really blew my mind. The Sunnis on one side are: the Syrian rebels and Al Qaeda. The Shiites on the other side are: the Syrian government and IRAN. Well, we hate both Iran and Al Qaeda, so we’re really on the fence here. Who to root for? One thing I know is we cannot be sure what we’ll get in the end, and it will be, chances are great, worse. Mr. Journalist says that Syrian rebels are quite vocal about their desire to FORM A NEW COUNTRY by uniting Syria with IRAQ (woah, didn’t we just spend trillions helping those guys? we went deep in debt to bring the Beacon of Democracy there, right?) so they can together take on IRAN and ISRAEL. Who in their right mind lumps Iran with Israel? By the way, the existing Syrian government is using Iranian aircraft to mow down the rebels.

Obama is giving nonmilitary aid to the rebels, just communications equipment. Romney says he would supply the rebels with weapons. Imagine if the rebels win…maybe we could supply weapons for them to use against Iran, too. That’d be okay. But, why does everybody over there hate on our little brother, Israel?

What Should Our Stance Be?

Mr. Journalist suggested an approach of Lessons Learned from our recent endeavors in the region, a review if you will.

Iraq: We removed Hussein at astronomical cost to us in dollars and lives. Now, they want to throw us out, remove our entire presence from their country, and are allowing Iran to move weapons across Iraq to assist the Syrian government, daily.
Egypt: We allowed Mubarak to be deposed. Muslim Brotherhood takes over. Struggles to maintain power.
Libya: We overthrow Gaddafi, via NATO. The crazy-hardline-militia is winning by inciting violence. They just killed our ambassador.
Syria: We provide communications equipment, and let ‘em all duke it out. However, it looks like some of the players have some re-arranging of the map in mind, without our input.
Afghanistan: Well, you know we have to add that to the list. We’ve spent a second fortune propping up a drug-addled despot and guarding his brother’s poppy fields because the alternative (Taliban) is worse. Our soldiers and marines are being killed by performing their “joint” training patrols with Afghan soldiers and police who are turning their guns on them. All training has been called off now. I’ve never understood what we’re doing there – we were going after the terrorists living in the caves, but they all left town and fled over the border to Pakistan as soon as we got there. Yet we’re still there…sending drones over the border to pick off the terrorists. And the American people overwhelmingly want the 2014 withdraw.
Pakistan: We’re actually waging a war with people hiding out in Pakistan, in an area of Pakistan the Pakistan government cannot control, or so they say. Osama bin Laden found Pakistan quite comfortable for a very long time. Pakistan has nukes. Many believe our presence in Afghanistan brings stability to that Stan-area, keeps the nukes from falling into the terrorists’ hands and being aimed at us. Which brings us to…Iran.

The Iranian Problem

Bush refused to negotiate with terrorists. Obama opened negotiations with Iran. He got nothing. In response, he re-initiated and strengthened the sanctions against them. Obama responded to the world’s criticism of Bush for not being diplomatic enough by trying negotiation first. As a result, the entire world is supporting our sanctions against Iran now. No one is buying their oil (which is all they have). Iran exports have dropped by two-thirds. In July 2012, exports were 30 percent that of a year ago. In essence, we have cut 70 percent of their revenue in one year, and they are really hurting. Their monetary unit exchange rate previously was: 9000 whatevers to $1. Now it’s 25,000 whatevers to $1. It’s economic warfare, and we’re killing ‘em. However, they’re only a few months from having a nuclear weapon.

According to the most recent inspection report, Iran has a facility in Fordow so deep underground that it is impervious to attack. We cannot destroy it with bombs. Inside this facility is 2100 centrifuges spinning away enriching uranium. What’s enriched uranium used for? Nukes. But, it has to be 90 percent purity. 700 of these machines are getting 20 percent purity. It’s tough to get from zero to 20 percent, piece of cake to go from 20 to 90…so they’re stopping at 20 and crying “see, we’re only going to 20 percent, we don’t want to get to 90 and create a nuclear weapon!” Are you getting the picture in your mind? Can you see 2100 of these machines whirring away deep underground? IRAN is a FEW MONTHS away from having nuclear weapons. Yes, I said Iran. Let’s pause and ponder that for a moment.

They are also experimenting with explosives at other locations, refusing to allow inspectors entry. They’re busy covering everything with plastic sheeting. Inspectors are actually more concerned about this than the 2100 centrifuges deep in the ground at Fordow.

Israel is a little concerned, lol. The situation is rapidly reaching the point where they can no longer do anything to stop Iran from having nukes. And they need us to weigh in. They can’t afford to wait til after our election. They are pushing us for a “red line,” one of those lines drawn in the sand thing. On one hand, military and intelligence hates red lines. It challenges credibility and eliminates flexibility for them. (The president issuing threats to foreign counties tends to force our hand.) And if we get physical with them, our international support for the sanctions disappears. And, since when does Israel decide our war policy? On the other hand, our Jewish population probably won’t be too happy if we leave Israel swinging in the wind. Why in the heck did we ever think helping to set up Israel in its old stomping grounds in the wake of World War II was a good idea? It probably had something to do with all that holocaust stuff happening to them in other parts of the world. Yeah, having their own place seemed good at the time.

If Iran gets nuclear weapons, well not if, when, it’s a game changer for the world. And Israel is the one most at risk. Can you imagine the Jews being wiped out again with nuclear bombs? And these other guys really, really, really hate Jews. They have PROMISED total annihilation of Israel. And you will not be able to put any pressure on them, you will not be able to invade them, they will get away with whatever they WANT. It will certainly be a brave new world…a radioactive one. Uhm, should we stop them now?

Well, we have nukes, too, right? We had a whole mess of them under Reagan, that’s for sure. However, Obama has been busy negotiating with Russia to further reduce our stockpile of nukes. Just signed another treaty with them. And sigh, reviving and modernizing our nuke supply just sounds…expensive.

Meanwhile, those Iranian nuclear scientists are mysteriously dropping like flies. The families of five assassinated Iranian scientists have brought a lawsuit against the “Zionist occupying regime and the arrogant powers” (uh, that would be Israel, then us and our friends in the UK, lol). And a Super Computer Bug found its way into the computers controlling the Iranian centrifuges and screwed ‘em up in 2010. You have to admire Israel just for being the resourceful, scrappy little doo.

So, the next president of the United States gets to figure all this out. Mr. Journalist said a president has never faced such a challenging period of time.