As much as I don’t like trigger warnings, apparently I can be triggered. No, it wasn’t a PTSD thing. Well, unless hearing the same unsubstantiated claptrap over and over induces PTSD, in which case, this particular piece of claptrap I’ve been hearing since I was seven or so, and first aware of the existence of something called the United States. (It will tell you what a woman of quick decision I am that at eight – the next year – I announced when I grew up I was going to be a writer and live in Denver. Mind you, at the time I thought Denver was by the sea, so quick decision and truly spectacular geographic ignorance.)
What I think it was is the same thing that caused me to throw shoes at the head of the Portugal-Russia speaker who was telling us about the glories of Soviet Life in my 6th grade geography class. Over and over and over again. As in, I’d throw a shoe, then the other, then limp up to get them. Then throw again when he crossed the line of what I was willing to tolerate. No, the teacher COULDN’T do anything with me. The Russian tried. He took the shoe that had hit him on the head and held it and said “What if I didn’t give it back.” “Then I’ll throw dictionaries!” He gave me my shoe back. To be fair, I didn’t hit him often (though that time I had.) Mostly I hit the podium and made him flinch, or just missed him and made him duck. Again, to be fair, I’d told the teacher I didn’t want to be there. Also, to be fair, she couldn’t send me to the directive council again. Because they’d call mom. And mom would take my side and terrify them to boot, by telling them just what kind of spineless life forms they were, and detailing the horrors of the Soviet Union. They’d learned in the past that I was a pain, but mom was trouble. At the time she had a radio show and wrote for a lot of newspapers. Also, the teacher might or might not have had permission to have Comrade Stinkface speak to the class. At least THEORETICALLY the school was a non-political zone.
Anyway… moving right along. What motivated me to a really inadvisable outburst was the same feeling about that particular panel speaker as I had about the Soviet Speaker. It was like being trapped in one of those nightmares, where people are saying crazy things and nothing makes sense.
The difference is that this poor woman, on a panel with my friend Kate was probably on the balancing edge of maybe being on our side. (The maybe is very maybe. While people can and do change their political stripes, it takes more than knowing things are wrong and what would fix them. As has been observed here, people can be startlingly libertarian in their private lives and total statists when it comes for what they vote for. Heck, I come from an entire country like that. Portuguese merrily ignore the laws, but are convinced there should be MORE laws… for other people.)
But still and all, she wasn’t Comrade Stinkface. Otoh, neither did I throw shoes at her head, so perhaps we’re even. (Though the high heeled crocs would never, at any rate, have made the impact of the steel toed ankle boots I wore at the time. Yes, I know what bearcat said about steel toes causing you to lose your toes. But I bought them not for work (I wore clogs for work in the dirt, or any other place I might get crushed toes.) Work boots were strictly for kicking. Stop laughing. Athena totally ISN’T autobiographical. I get along with dad. Also, how many times do I have to tell you I have no sense of direction?)
Anyway, so there I was, late at night on a Saturday, after signing, Baen Roadshow, panel, dinner, taking in the last panel of the evening, before crashing, and this woman starts talking about the death of meritocracy and how tough times will teach special snow flakes they’re no entitled. So far so good, but it’s really hard to understand her (I thought she had a speech impediment, but Dan tells me she was from … New Jersey? Something like that.)
And out of her mouth comes the words, “America is an empire, and I guess we’ve hit the decline. Empires don’t last forever, and this is a decline—”
At which point, my mouth, with no notice to my brain erupts into “We have not yet begun to rise.” And when she tried to protest, I might or might not have said “Bullshit” (I thought it) but I did say “We are not an empire and we are not in decline. I come from Europe, I should know.” Oh, yeah, the voice was like the voice of the Metatron, splitting the clouds.
If Sarah – Mrs. Kilted Dave – hadn’t grabbed my arm, yanked me down and talked me down, I suppose I would have proceeded to March to the podium, take the microphone, possibly climb on the table, and start shouting at the very sleepy dozen of people in the audience. I don’t know. I honestly was just a spectator at the back of my head at that point.
Yes, I know some of you are going to argue, but no, we are not an empire. The Soviets, weirdly, were an empire, with occupation of other lands and feeding of products (and riches) to the mother land. A predatory empire at that, since they never gave anything comparable to what they took. Instead, they protected the colonies from the imaginary “imperialism” of the US. (Which is why they accused us of it, and that piece of propaganda is still around. They needed that boogey man.)
You know, the same “imperialism” that made our client states filthy rich and quite able to call us names.
Yes, sure, we have economic influence. Or had, at least – frowns – we did. And sure, we have on occasion installed if not puppet governments as close as makes no difference. But we don’t occupy/claim territory, and no matter what the no blood for oil idiots had to say, we’ve never seized the natural riches of other lands.
We were… at best, the facilitators of a commonwealth.
Again, I know there will be all sorts of protests. Americans always feel guilty over the few times they fought for their own national interest, instead of for things that couldn’t benefit them at all. This comes, I think from not having studied history to any marked degree. Each country is SUPPOSED to defend its own interests. It’s part of the functions of a nation. If you don’t look after your interests who will? The international community is not a kindergarten, and there is no benevolent, all-knowing teacher.
However, I still agree with Dave – and I do know history – Americans are horrible imperialists, all they want to do is go home.
As for decline…
Well, my dears, and I won’t deny we’ve caught the Marxist virus. We let it infect our schools, our universities, our journalists, and our so called “elites.”
However, people don’t die of trifling little colds, and nations don’t die of Marxists taking over sectors that used to be vital and which are now being superseded by technology. We might have got “penicillin” of new technology just in time. I think we have.
I’m not saying it will be easy. I’m not saying it won’t take your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor. (For some of us, at least. When I came out of the political closet, I knew I might be signing my life away.) But that’s neither here nor there.
Empires enter decline and die, sure.
But America isn’t an Empire. America is an idea – a new idea unleashed upon the world. This is why she scares the lackeys of the old and busted statist ideas, the servitors of the old territories and the old feuds.
Sure, we have problems. But when haven’t we? Since 1776, when has there been a time that our liberty was completely assured and we knew we’d not have to fight for it?
We’re here because the idea of individual liberty will not perish from this world – no matter how much the precious snowflakes cry.
We’re here because the idea of special snowflakes, the idea of an aristocracy of any color or class is repugnant to the very core of our souls.
Yes, if we have to fight on the streets we’ll be scarred, but I hope (and pray – oh, boy, do I pray) it won’t come that.
But here’s the thing: a nation under stress reverts to its fundamentals. Not the fundamentals of that generation, mind, but the fundamentals of the nation, the fundamentals of its founding, its myths, its glorious legends.
When shocked Russia reverted not to the proletarian revolution/anti-capitalism its latest generation had been raised in, but to the glories of the Russian Empire. While Putin might be an ex KGB man, he has been seized by the national ethos and become tzar Putin.
Our nation is – that the woman talking was right about – going to hit the wall. (SPQR linked an economic article on the thread yesterday. Apparently our growth for the first quarter was 0.1%… which is essentially stopped, particularly since figures are always revised downward. Oh, but don’t worry, because they PROMISE us that the economy is/will grow by 0.3% this quarter and also that we’re at the roaring start of a recovery. And if you believe that – they say it’s because of the better job numbers. Brother. They don’t live where I do – I have some swamp land in Florida. Almost no alligators, and I sell it cheep. – and I wish SPQR wouldn’t post those articles. No, I don’t, really. BUT he does owe me money for wood putty for those dents on my desk.) You can’t really screw up a massive sector of the economy all the while printing money in a fiat currency (so every new bill takes value and trust away from the existing ones) so you bolster a stock market into a bubble, and not cause a massive crash. (Oh, but fear not. Consumer spending is up… because of rising energy prices. Yes, yes, I knew it would cheer you up. Me, I’m crying for joy. Well… crying anyway.)
I predict we’re going to hit the wall and it will be both more terrifying and far less impressive than people expect.
Your tech isn’t going to vanish in a poof of smoke. Your knowledge won’t vanish either. Those of us who are even minimally resourceful might lose a lot, but, health holding up and us not being in one of the areas where there’s physical violence (and there might or might not be such areas) we’ll be okay. BUT the ones who expect everything to be smoothed for them, and the disciples of “equality” and “fairness” that consists in giving special things to special snowflakes are going to hurt.
And we will find new ways, but the ways we find are likely to leave the Marxist-infected sectors in the dust. (No, that’s not wishful thinking. See, the problem is that the creatures can’t be creative. They can try. But as Hollywood and most of traditional publishing proves, they just can’t CREATE. And also, because they drink their own ink and believe their own lies, they stink as managers, even in the good times. In the bad times… well…)
And then the ethos of this country will reassert itself. You know, the fundamental ideas of our founding.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
We have not yet begun to rise. Our greatest days lie in the future.
According To Hoyt 
Approved.
This is why, as unhappy as I am with the political arena, I’m not … overcome with a paralyzing fear. I am concerned, yes, but what little faith I am capable of feeling rests firmly on the side of the American people. Because, when in doubt, we are Americans, dammit.
The heirs of those who looked at a boat, looked at their homeland, looked at a boat, and said, “Ah, hell, let’s do it. We’ll make it work.” Then proceeded to do so, despite the lives that the endeavor claimed.
The heirs of those who looked at all that vast, open land to the West, and went, “Hmmmm. Looks like it could be fun. Let’s go.” And proceeded to explore, settle, exploit, worship-in-awe some of the glories of the western half of the continent, despite the toll — in time, effort, lives — that it took. (Look at pictures of the Badlands, Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, and marvel in wonder, if you haven’t recently.)
The heirs of those who tilted their heads back, eyed the Moon, and said, “Hmmmm. Looks like it could be fun. Yeah, let’s do it.” And proceeded to put a human being on *another celestial body.* And, yes, we haven’t been back in a long time, but we DO have a very advanced robot exploring MARS for crying out loud. We have a less-advanced robot which has been doing that job for TEN YEARS and counting. We have other ‘bots looking at the moons of Saturn, giving us hope that there may even be life of some sort in more than one place in our solar system. We’re finding planets (perhaps not in detail, that may come) in other solar systems!
It is not that we have fallen — we’re still so very young, in terms of the universe, or even our own planet. We’ve just gotten a bit distracted. Exploration, discovery, curiosity — these are our strengths, and these are what we should embrace. We’re not perfect. Attempting to be so results in … hand-wringing and flailing over relatively unimportant things. We’ve gotten distracted because we’ve run out of challenges that spark the imagination. Well, no, we haven’t, but the hand-wringing and flailing have smothered them, in an attempt to “be safe.”
Oh, fuck that. We’re Americans. As if “being safe” was what we were actually bred to be.
If it was, there wouldn’t be a United States of America.
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“Because, when in doubt, we are Americans, dammit.”
Exactly!
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We’re too stubborn to quit.
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You remind me of Order of the Stick.
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High praise.
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We’re too stubborn to quit.
I got that distinct impression from you and your wife at Ravencon. It’s always a good thing to find out that there are like-minded individuals out there. Oh, and get some sleep now. You’re not going to get much in the near future.
In my current-and previous-career, I work with a fair number of people who are either naturalized citizens or who have green cards and are on the path towards citizenship. Once you’ve taken the oath, you’re an American. Unqualified, unhyphenated, good old American. I’ve been to a number of countries around the world and I get the distinct impression that this experience is not the norm.
I predict we’re going to hit the wall and it will be both more terrifying and far less impressive than people expect.
Math is like the Terminator: ” It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. ” There are going to be a large number of people for whom -sadly- this will be a revelation.
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The problem is that less than a third the people born in America are, by those standards, “American”.
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Yes, but a third of the people born outside America are also Americans.
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Hear, hear.
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Justify the number. Look, I get that you’re a doom-fetishist, but from where do you derive such a number?
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I believe the gentleman is using “a third” in the traditional Biblical rhetorical way, which we are informed (by Tyconius et al) will often use “a third part” as a reference to the number of divisions being used, and not by being 33% (or even very slightly less).
A lot of people are better than they know themselves to be, and react more bravely in the crunch than they would have expected. It helps a lot if other people are also trying to be brave in the crunch. It’s hard to say until the crunch happens. It’s also hard to tell what will happen if a crunch drags on, until it does.
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It helps a lot if other people are also trying to be brave in the crunch.
This happens when people share an ideal, and believe others are willing to stand for that ideal. It happens less when people who might share that ideal dismiss the possibility of its survival.
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So? The other two thirds can go sit in the corner and wring their hands.
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The overall thrust of this is similar to Alan Kay’s “The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet.” If you take on that much accepted wisdom at one time, there’s no where else to go except to extrapolate again from essential axioms. It’s an audacious way to fire the imagination….
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I always want to demand that anyone who calls the US Imperialist give me the names of the countries that are our colonies, and who the American politicians installed as governors are.
Of course, they have their backtrack route already planned out, something about “Cultural Imperialism” or Capitalist exploitation. It’s really quite pointless.
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The Sioux nation, the Creek Nation, the Cherokee nation etc. I can look up the current government officials who reside over these entities if you like. I will stipulate that I believe that we stop being an Imperialist nation just after the 19th century and these client nations are mostly mainstream American today (even if there are a few hold-outs). We are culturally hegemonic we dominate other cultures unintentionally through the domination of entertainment culture and our financial success over the past century.
I am not starting a fight but these natives certainly considered their territory nations especially as they fought the US government for control in the late 19th century.
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Actually, the ones you named are self-ruling sovereign nations (and some of those tribes are several different nations) inside the United States which have accepted certain treaty considerations we are bound to supply, and which also entitles them to be US citizens as well as citizens of their nations. Technically they are client states, not colonies. (Mostly, US citizens didn’t move in.)
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They are today. They were not self governing (on the whole) in the 19th century that is why I said we are no longer imperial. Plus we colonized the land we forced them off of in the 18th and 19th century which was a colonizing event.
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If you and your merry band send out surveyors, lay out a town with streets, set up amenities, and sell land, that’s a colony. Lots of Greek and Roman colonies like that.
Most of American “colonization,” except for the odd organized expedition, was more a matter of pastoral nomadism than colonization. If you wander downriver or across the plains and set up a cabin or a sod house wherever you happen to find a nice place, you’re a pastoral nomad (especially if you then move on again and again, a la Daniel Boone or the Ingalls family). Driving people out isn’t a necessary prerequisite; those who did were often just as happy to drive out white neighbors they didn’t get along with. You might even see the Western range wars in this light.
A fair number of Native Americans did the same thing, of course, although nobody but the Iroquois and Lakota managed the “driving people out” part as well as our mostly Scots/Irish/English/German pastoral nomads did. (The Iroquois didn’t even want to live in Ohio or Kentucky; they just wanted exclusive rights to the fur trade, and you don’t get more exclusive than sending out warbands and hunting everybody else down to Georgia or over the Mississippi.)
But of course, there were also a fair number of Native Americans who stayed in place, made alliances, and still live in their old homelands to this day, without needing any reservation or treaty.
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Given how many were non-racist enough to marry non-Indians, that just becomes “genocide.” (Real Life Claim.)
Kind of like how the Spotted Owl is being “wiped out” by interbreeding with other sub-species.
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As was pointed out earlier, the obvious cure for such genocide is to hire people to shoot whites.
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The Cherokee tried really hard to do that “marry out” thing, and even applied to become a state of their own with the US, which is why so many people today have some Cherokee descent. Unfortunately, there was that whole Trail of Tears business, which really is not a nice chapter in our history. (Though it does explain such a wide spread for the Cherokee as well.)
Anyway. There’s still a lot that’s messed up with the BIA and the actual relations with various sovereign tribes, mostly because nobody wants to take the trouble to fix them.
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It’s seldom healthy to side with the loosing side of a revolution, especially when it’s against the people you live next to, especially when some of the tribes don’t follow the agreements. (Britannica’s article claims the Brits were horrified by having the Cherokee on their side.)
None of it’s nice.
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Yeah, we suspect we’ve got some Cherokee back there – I certainly look like I’ve got native American in me – but the family branch that it’s mostly likely in is the branch that would be in the most denial about it. They arrived in Texas in the 1830s, though, so the timing would be right. (Another project on the back-burner, getting back on Ancestry.)
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Are your cheekbones high? Does your family think sorta kinda maybe somebody a few dozen generations back might possibly have been Amerindian? Then you’re probably got at least as much Cherokee blood in your veins as the junior miss senator from Massachew.
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*snort* Yeah, that’s on my mind, too, these days, sad to say. (Though that’s the least of my problems with her.)
The family branch most-likely-to-be-in-denial had their ancestry traced back around 1900, and printed up a number of copies. One copy eventually wound up with my grandmother (b. 1908), but I don’t know who she got it from. An ancestress in the 1800s is described in the book as French Huguenot, but someone’s crossed it out in pencil and written “Cherokee.” I don’t know who did it – my grandmother wouldn’t have, and her mother would have had a fit at the very idea.
As for me: square jaw, short, squat, heavy eyebrow ridge and almost no upper eyelid, extremely carb sensitive (durnit), and I tan marvelously, mosquitos don’t like me and poison oak doesn’t affect me much. But a lot of that could be from the Scottish side, too.
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Hey, Ill have you know that I recently got DNA results back from 23andme, and I am 0.6% Amerindian! I’m gonna start putting it on government forms!
Actually, that number was a bit disappointing. Family myth had an Amerind ancestor more recently in our past than that (the percentage would put said ancestor at least 7 generations back, assuming a 1/2 split each time, and we thought it was only 5), but I suppose it was wrong.
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Since it’s surprisingly hard to find anything but the Evil Meanies Being Mean background:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-indianwartimeline2.html
Tribal groups don’t mix well with more settled ones.
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Actually, the Comanche managed a good bit of that “driving out part” – once they got the horse (courtesy of the Spanish in Mexico. The Sioux and the other Plains hunter tribes also got the horse through the same source. How ironical is that? The white man giveth and the white man taketh away, blessed be …)
The Comanche were a division of the Shoshone (refer to T.R. Fehrenbach for particulars) who basically got the horse, took to the horse, and came roaring down out of the northern Rockies, and took over the Southern Plains. They pushed the Apache aside – splitting the Lipan (eastern Apache) off from the other Apache divisions farther to the west, and pushing divers other tribes – such as the Tonkawa and the Karankawa out of their traditional hunting grounds in Texas.
Which should explain why the Tonkawa were pleased to serve as scouts and warriors for the Texians in warring against the Comanche. And why some Apache were eager to serve as US Army scouts later on. And why the Crow and Pawnee – traditional enemies of the Sioux – were very happy also to enlist as US Army scouts. To make war on their traditional enemies, of course.
There was a famous peace treaty between the Comanche and the German settlers who came to the Texas Hill Country in the 1840s. It’s still documented and memorialized locally as the one peace treaty that was never broken. And it wasn’t – it was between the Penateka Comanche – the southernmost tribal division. But … (and this is a monumental-sized but) there were about 14 other Comanche tribal divisions which were not bound by it. And within about fifteen years, war parties from those other divisions were pretty freely making hay in the Hill Country. (Consult Scott Zesch’s “The Captured” and Gregory Michno’s “A Fate Worse Than Death” for a selection of stomach-churning particulars.)
Oh, and for another interesting take on Native Americans in the great fabric of the United States – this novel by a fellow indy author: Jack Shakely – The Confederate War Bonnet. About the Civil War … as experienced by the Cherokee. The cognitive dissonance will likely blow the mind of anyone who has not seriously looked at the history of the American frontier.
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@JDB…
Bullshit.
Y’know… I don’t want to shift the direction this thread should take, but I can’t let this go by without comment.
Your position is the product of wishful thinking and myopia filtered through the lens of sheerest fantasy. Whatever the expansion of the US into the various regions of the North American continent was, the one thing it was not was “imperialism”. In order to term it that, you lack one key element, which would have been even a vague set of nations against which to practice the meaning of the term. The concept of imperialism implies that one dominant nation forces another subservient nation into that state by force, and then incorporates the territory and assets of that nation. Spain in Central America, and the Andes? Imperialist. Spain in the rest of South America? The British, French, and Spanish in North America? Where, pray tell, are the mines, the cities, the conquered peoples put under the yoke? Did we make slaves of the Cherokee? Put them to work, exploit them? What happened in those territories wasn’t imperialism, it was development. It’s not imperialism when you’re the one digging the mines, my friend.
The various tribal groups which you want to dignify by referring to them as “nations” were never “nations” in the sense you’re trying to use the word. Even the most politically sophisticated of the lot, the Iroquois Confederacy, lacked the essential elements to be dignified with the term “nation” as it is understood in normal terms. You can fantasize all you like about the “horrible things done to the innocent Indian nations”, but the fact remains that they were not nations, nor were they entirely blameless for what happened to them. You can offer up the various crimes against the Western Plains Indians, and I’ll gladly counter with the betrayals of the Northeastern tribes that turned on us during the French and Indian War, along with the Revolution and the War of 1812. Whether it is fair or not, the relations between the indigenous tribes and the US government were colored by those early experiences. Wounded Knee? How about Deerfield? How about a thousand other random encounters between primitive warriors whose putative leaders had signed treaties, and who promptly went out raiding the unsuspecting settlers? And, then the leaders who’d signed those treaties casually mention that they weren’t “speaking for the young men of the tribe”, who continued to go on the warpath in order to raid white settlements. Oh, yeah–Those are all the trappings of a civilized “nation”, aren’t they?
Here’s a clue: If you negotiate with someone, and it later turns out that they weren’t “speaking for the tribe”, that’s not a nation: That’s the primitive equivalent of a biker gang.
There are reasons, which have oh-so-obviously been forgotten, for what happened between the indigenous peoples of the US and the rest of us. I have ancestors on both sides of that line, and I refuse to tolerate the romanticism with which fantasists like you persist in viewing what occurred when raging primitive encountered civilization.
Frankly, from a lot of what happened between the groups, I’m a little surprised any of the various tribes survived at all. Typical treatment from elsewhere in the world would have included a pretty thorough extermination. Ask the Hmong, who used to be a dominant lowland tribe when the ancestors of the modern Vietnamese moved south. Hell, go ask the Celts who used to dominate Europe, or better yet, the poor bastards whose only remnants are the Basques. They used to dominate most of what is now Spain, did they not? Shall we start a movement decrying the successive peoples who moved in? I’m not even sure we really know who came first, or if they’re even an identifiable group, anymore.
You want to call what happened to the indigenous peoples in North America imperialism? Really? How, pray tell, do you build an “empire” when your opponents are so politically and technologically unsophisticated that they barely consist of roaming hunter-gatherer bands with such a paucity of cultural attainment? We’re talking about groups that had only the cohesion of loose fellowships, who preyed on each other tooth and nail with an alacrity and joy that beggars modern understanding. The US did not move in on territory controlled by even a relatively sophisticated tribal group like the Mongols, or the Sarmatians.
Displacing and supplanting primitive tribespeople is not imperialism; it’s what happens when you’re unfortunate enough to be the primitive when the fellow with a more developed culture shows up as a competitor in your environment.
You want a good example of this same sort of fuzzy thinking? Go take a look at how the various agencies of the Federal Government are dealing with the decline of the sainted Spotted Owl: They’re shooting the far more successful Barred Owl, in a misguided attempt to stop evolution and adaptation. Had a similar mindset been in place during the period you’re describing as “imperialist”, I’ve no doubt that the Bureau of Indian Affairs would have been hiring buffalo hunters to go out and shoot settlers, in order to “save” the indigenous peoples…
No doubt, you approve of that policy, feeling as you do about the underdog. All I see is futile, wasted effort in a misguided attempt to stand athwart the path of history and cry “stop”. History didn’t listen to the dodo, didn’t listen to my oppressed ancestors in Northern Europe, and I see no particular reason that things would be different just because the indigenes came here over a land bridge several thousand years before the other part of my ancestry, the evil white man got here from the other direction.
Imperialism, my ass. You want imperialism? Take a look at the Russian history with regards to Central Asia. That’s imperialism. You don’t get to call moving in on what is essentially unoccupied and underutilized territory “imperialism” just because you want to. Where were the crushed nations, the besieged cities? Spain, in Mexico? Imperialism, clearly–Can’t argue that. The British and/or the later US, here in North America? Not hardly. Expansionism? Certainly.
If you’re building an empire, you need opponents who aren’t exponentially behind you in sophistication. You need to conquer near-equals who you incorporate into your polity, not primitives that can’t even smelt copper and tin to make bronze. It’s imperialism when you move in on established mines, as the Romans did in Spain and Portugal. It’s not imperialism when you go somewhere and dig your own damn mines in regions where there was nothing more sophisticated than gathering pretty rocks. That’s a different animal, entirely. You can’t term it “imperialism” when your putative candidates for oppression are barely even pre-literate, and still stuck in the fucking stone age.
What happened to the majority of the indigenous peoples here in North America was unfortunate for them in the details, but they got a better deal out of things than most people in their situation ever did, anywhere else. I don’t hear too many people decrying the fate of those who eventually became my Irish and Scots ancestors when the Romans and others moved in on them, nor do I hear massive wailing about the horrors perpetrated on them by the Norse. Bluntly put, shit happens. Your game isn’t good enough to compete, when the new folks move in down the street? Either learn, adapt, and up your game, or suffer the consequences. Bad things happen to the feckless and lazy when the better competitor shows up. And, that’s not a bad thing, in the grand schematic, when you stretch that diagram across the centuries.
I’m flat-out tired of hearing the “waily-waily-woe, we soooo evil…” bullshit you’re perpetrating, here. Start a protest movement against the English for the fucking Enclosures, why don’t you? That’s the proximate cause for what happened to a majority of the Eastern indigenous peoples, anyway–If the relatively unsophisticated Scots hadn’t have lost their asses to the English, we’d still be happily raising oats and shagging sheep in the highlands. We couldn’t get our shit together, so we lost out. And, the shit rolled downhill onto a lot of equally “innocent” indigenous peoples here in what became the US. Tough. Deal with it. History happens.
Honestly, about the only barely credible case you could come up with for “imperialism” would be the fate of the Cherokee, but even that’s pretty hard to argue as “imperialism”, when most of the cultural trappings that made them even slightly credible as a “nation” were borrowed or imitated from their “imperializers”, to coin a term. Did the Cherokee come up with the idea of an alphabet on their own? No, they copied it, having seen and realized the advantages. Given a few more generations to copy, they might have been a credible candidate for being considered a victim of “imperialism”. As it was? They weren’t, bluntly put. Victims of assholes, yes. Can’t argue that, at all–Andrew Jackson was a criminal of the lowest order, in some respects.
I’m so ‘effing tired of hearing this bullshit. I really am–And, that’s coming from someone with actual indigenous ancestry.
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Hit a nerve did I. feel free to disagree. I will feel free not to reply to someone who has obviously lost their temper, putting words in my mouth (it is dirty in there you might want to keep out), and using quite a few epithets to make their point.
I suggest that those viewing his opinion please go and read about the various native nations that existed before and were set up during western expansion. You will then see which of us is correct.
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You live in a fantasy world. I don’t.
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Please notice the utter lack of a counter argument…. generally indicates someone was just out for a reaction.
Not that it’s any less important to respond, just indicates that *I* sure won’t be responding to him.
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Kirk, this is his standard approach. Comes in, makes a statement we are all supposed to agree with and then refuses to actually discuss it when folks don’t agree with him. Ignore him.
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Hit a nerve did I.
Yeah, the 10,000th person to tell someone he has no right to exist in his native country is likely to hit a nerve. That doesn’t mean that the person hitting the nerve is right factually, or right to go around bonking people on the nerves.
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Since I never said that it shouldn’t hit that nerve. I said that America had been an imperial power. Facts about history may not always be nice….slavery was bad too. Bad things happened doesn’t change reality.
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Whenever I have heard the non-indigenous peoples of the Americas being accused of imperialism, so far, it has always been with the understanding that imperialism is inherently evil, and it has generally been accompanied by the demand that the non-indigenes either (a) support the indigenes forever at a standard of living of the indigenes’ choosing, or (b) go away. I have often been told, simply because of the colour of my skin, that I have no right to be here.
Maybe you weren’t going there. But if you weren’t, why were you riding that bus?
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I am not riding that bus because there is no bus to ride. I am a fan of Imperialism in many cases. Imperialism has been a positive good sometimes, for instance the British Empire held Islamic supremacy movements to a minimum for over 100 years. I am not suggesting anything at all outside of the fact that America was engaged in empire building in the 18th and 19th century. That is a fact… I posted a quote from Andrew Jackson earlier which illustrates that fact, however my post is not showing up. I doubt this post will show up as i seem to be banned from posting.
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In replying to your comment bemoaning the fact that you seem to be banned from posting, let me ask why you think you would be banned?
WP is often fickle, links raise it’s ire, and WP delenda est. But you jump to an assumption of banning. Might want to examine why.
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I think he’s been in academia too long… It happens. There “indignation” is correlated to “it needed to be said.” Which is why we have things like women’s studies.
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I am not engaging in “indignation” I am stating a fact about the political policy of the United States government. That is all I have done. I have not made any value judgments at all (other than slavery is bad) but have been attacked for stating what seems like a pretty obvious fact about what happened in our government at the time.
Sarah do you believe that the United States government never acted as an Imperial power during the 19th century?
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But you have not answered the initial challenge(s). You state it as fact, and announce it as obvious, but there are those who disagree.
Your statement of imperialism has been rebutted with the notion that Western expansion was not imperial expansion:
There was no organized polity in place maintaining recognized control of territory with defined borders and the structures of civilization.
There are potential rebuttals. You aren’t making them, you’re declaring your position the default by virtue of it’s “obvious” and “factual” nature.
Prove your case.
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I am not here to educate you or to prove anything. I would like to know Sarah’s opinion and that is about all. If you do not believe that the US government engaged in empire building in the 19th century, so what? I didn’t ask your opinion I asked Sarah’s.
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I haven’t stated my opinion. That you assume you’re in a position to educate me, is curious. What do you know of me? That you’re dismissive of other’s opinions is not surprising, given your showing so far.
You’re commenting in a public forum, and this is the tail end of an open comment thread. I called on you to support your facts, and respond to the previous rebuttal. Your choice not to do either, and no skin off my nose. Perhaps not the best way to wander into a community, though.
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Still waiting…
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On what? On Mrs. Hoyt?!? You do realize she has numerous other obligations? That jumping forth to provide you with answers to your important questions might be — somewhat down the list of priorities?
But, do please wait right here.
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I am not here to educate you or to prove anything.
Good thing, because you haven’t yet bothered to do more than assert falsehoods and sneer when they’re corrected.
And, as we all know from last week at another author’s blog, a sneer is not an argument.
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I’m serious about this — The French tried to have an empire. The UK tried to have an empire. Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands tried to have an empire.
The 13 Colonies and the fledgling US mostly found out what happens if you give a bunch of Irish and Scots a lift across the sea in a boat to a place they haven’t been. Getting to the edge of Europe and having to stop had previously cramped the Scoti’s nomadic style.
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Betcha there are Scots in the groups working on getting us off the mudball. How much broader of a scope for expansion can there be than all of space.
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Thus is demonstrated the vacant nature of modern academia: When challenged on an absurd assertion, the practitioner, whom I refuse to describe as a “scholar” resorts to “statements of the obvious”, instead of a reasoned statement in refutation of something with which he disagrees.
I’ve laid out why I believe the settlement of the North American continent did not amount to imperialism, but all I hear in return is a vacuum filled with vapid assertions, assumptions, and “wisdom” received from sources unnamed.
I’ve got zero respect for this sort of interlocuter. Instead of discussion or even argument, they simply shut down their thinking processes, and resort to parroting the blatherings they absorbed in whatever joke they thought they received as an education, never managing to stretch past the limits of their indoctrination. Just how the blue hell you can term expansion into a vacuum as being “imperialism”, we’ve yet to hear. And, likely, won’t.
Similarly, I venture to predict that Mr. Baird will shortly inform us that the Nazis weren’t socialist, not of the left, and instead were the whole creation of the nasty, evil conservatives. This will be based on “feelings”, and so forth, and we will be treated to arguments like “It’s obvious…”, and “It’s commonly accepted…”, while never addressing any of the objections made by anyone daring enough to offer a refutation of that rather absurd idea.
It’s generally not even worth the effort to engage these sorts, because of the density of their self-hating indoctrination. Some “educator” managed to fill Mr. Baird’s head with these ideas at a point when his mind was apparently still plastic, and he hasn’t managed to overcome that. I recognize the signs, all too well–The term “imperialism”, as applied to the settlement of North America, is all too consonant with the ravings of Howard Zinn, who we will no doubt be shortly informed is the final word in historical “analysis” when it comes to the history of these United States.
Has there ever been a nation such as ours, where the so-called (and, mostly self-identified) intelligentsia has so thoroughly turned in on itself with self-hatred? I honestly can’t think of one, historically. The Romans didn’t, at least in my readings, nor did the Carthaginians. You can’t find wailings about the evilness of their sacrifices to Moloch, or how naughty their exploitation of their Spanish colonies was. The Carthaginians at least had the courage of their convictions, disgusting as we may find them, and refrained from gifting us with their self-hatred.
I think we must be unique, in regards to this intellectual self-destruction. Or, at least, the self-hating types didn’t manage to make their thoughts and ravings in a permanent enough manner to come down to us.
More likely, if it existed, the monks of the Dark Ages read that drivel, and promptly re-used the parchment for other purposes–Like, passing on the knowledge and accomplishments from the days prior to those decadent and corrupt descendants of the Roman height denigrated everything their predecessors accomplished, and when their nation actually had self-confidence and some vestiges of self-respect. Likewise, it’s pretty likely that Mr. Baird’s whinging will receive similar treatment, when the future equivalents to the medieval monks are clearing out salvaged hard drives to reuse and re-purpose for things of actual worth and value.
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No, you are stating as fact an obvious falsehood. Then whining and moaning because people are being mean to you and calling you a liar. You could man up and try and defend your position but instead you stomp your foot like a two year old and say, “Is so!”
Makes one think you might be from academia.
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Yep.
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Checklist item #2.
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“I suggest that those viewing his opinion please go and read about the various native nations that existed before and were set up during western expansion. You will then see which of us is correct.”
Most of us already have, and we know who is correct. Again, there WERE NO NATIVE NATIONS! Go back and read the first hand accounts, most of the Indian tribes didn’t even have the concept of a “nation” or for that matter even of owning land.
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There was nothing recognizable as a “nation” in the future United States at the time of European settlement. There are hints of primitive kingdoms, but they were wiped out long before Europeans knew about these lands.
There MAY have been an exception in the Natchez, but they were borderline, at most. How much credit for civilization do we want to give a culture that requires human sacrifices when their ruler dies? In any case, the Natchez were pushed to the edge by diseases introduced by the Spanish and finally exterminated by the French.
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Now, c’mon, guys. The older meaning of “nation” isn’t a sovereign nation state with a stable government, etc. It’s a relatively unified group of tribes and/or settlements (depending on whether it’s moving or sitting still).The Goths were a nation. The Philistines were a nation. “Why do the nations rage?” was not just talking about the mighty Hittites and Egyptians and Babylonians and Phoenicians; it was also talking about piddly tribal ethnic groups that did piddly raids, and thus made the Israelites have difficult lives.
And also, the freakin’ Iroquois Confederacy was a freakin’ nation state by anybody’s reckoning. It ruled a larger area than Europe! Had more parliamentary democracy and parliamentary speeches than you could shake a stick at! Had a complicated bicameral governmental structure too!
Not nice guys, mind you.
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Look, the simple fact is that you cannot “imperialize” against jello. And, that’s what all of the North American tribes were, when you get down to it. They utterly lacked what it takes to be termed “victims of imperalism”, which would be, 1.) fixed territory, 2.) features that need to be suppressed by the empire-building nation, 3.) fixed assets like mines, cities, and other infrastructure that can be turned to the use of the empire, and 4.) a level of sophistication which is above the tribal.
Dear God, the Iroquois didn’t even have a written language, or the conception of anything more sophisticated than primitive pictographs until the Europeans showed up.
What happened to the indigenous population of North America was not imperialism, it was pretty much what happens when stone-age tribal societies encounter anyone with the bare beginnings of a civilization. There was no smelting of metals, no wheel, no written language, no… Sweet jeebus, it would be easier to describe what they did have: Stone-age technology that was obsolete in Europe and Asia back before Ashurbanipal. And, I’ll point out that when the Europeans were at a similar level of technology and civilization, things like Gobekli Tepi were happening. Show me something similar in the Americas, will you? The mound builders? Maybe… But, they were long gone when the expansion of the US swept across that territory, and their successors utterly lacked their sophistication or scale.
Imperialism implies you’re taking on near-peer competitors who stand a chance of resisting you as you incorporate them into your polity. There was never a chance that the indigenous peoples of North America would be able to stand on equal enough terms to be dignified as such. Period.
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Kirk,
So, your arguement boils down to the Us was not imperialistic but just expansionist because trouble groupings didn’t meet some definition of nation state.
So, it not the actions that define something but the labels?
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Sweet jeebus, but I’m tired of this moronic argument. Tell ya what: I’m going to go out and declare empire against the ant hill in the back yard, taking their territory to turn it into a garden. There: Are you happy? I’m an imperialist, now.
That’s the level of what you’re claiming: You’re taking a technical term that applies to things like, oh, say British actions on the subcontinent,and trying to conflate it with a situation that quite clearly isn’t. There were no nations to enslave, and you’ll note a certain lack of enslavement and exploitation against the indigenes here in North America–We just wanted the land they weren’t using. Nobody outside of the Spanish made serious use of them as slaves, or really even tried to. We just pushed them out or absorbed them.
There was no quasi-Roman “Hey, let’s go rape Dacia…”, because there was no equivalent to Dacia. Call it colonialism, call it expansion, call it whatever you want, but it was not imperialism. We did not co-opt any Apache farms, nor did we come take over any Chinook cities. We moved into underutilized, unexploited lands and did our own development. That’s not even colonialism, by the marxist definition. We built our own infrastructure, we brought our own people, and moved in on territory that was essentially unoccupied. Was it pretty? Was it nice for the primitives who occupied a small percentage of that land, and who were not effectively exploiting it? No, it was not. It was also not “imperialism” as it is generally understood.
Life sucks when the more sophisticated and effective culture moves in on you. Unless you’re like the Japanese, and get off your ass to adapt to the change, bad things are going to happen to you. Happened to the Khoikhoi in Southern Africa, happened to the Hmong in Asia, happened to a lot of our ancestors in successive waves across Europe. To describe that process using the loaded term “imperialism” is to frame those events in a particular coded, self-hating and anti-American manner. It’s unfortunate that you don’t see the way in which this has been attempted, and why it is the highest intellectual dishonesty and depravity. Start asking yourself why the people who are engaged in this are trying to indoctrinate you with this particular framing device. What is the goal, here, and why are they wanting you to think like this?
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I agreed with you. We want call it imperialism but expansionism.
The ends are the same though.
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Yeah, why get hung up on nuance and distinctions when we can equate consensual sex with rape or capital punishment with murder. Whether you’re shoving a little old lady in front of a bus or out of the bus’ path, either way you’re shoving around a little old lady.
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RES,
If you call a force sexual encounter consensual sex, does that change what happend. No!
It’s the underlying truth that is important. We can’t rely on the labels people use. Was the Trail of Tears justified or not? Why are we arguing over a word and not the moral implications of what happened?
Were the actions moral justified at the time. We do like to judge past events with the lens of our current morality.
All of this argument is moot as it’s in the past and the best we can do is learn from it and try and not repeat what we think are the mistakes. None of us living to day are moral responsible for things that happened before we were born.
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Josh,
A word or phrase conveys moral implications, that is why we use them and why we debate they appropriately describe what happened. It is by employing emotianally laden language that some seek to define terms of debate a priori, stacking the deck in their favour. “Pro-choice” or “pro-life”, the moral question remains the same, nicht wahr? Except the terms of the debate control its direction.
Is the argument moot if the purpose is to learn from the past. Slaveholders thought of their peculiar institution as an act of benevolent paternalism, after all. Or is the argument necessary for proper comrehension of the lessons to be gleaned, in which case the use of loaded terms is an effort to force a conclusion which might not be appropriate?
Historian Niall Ferguson, IIRC, it was who arguend that America’s failure is in denying we are an empire and refusing to take up the empirical burden. As our current administration lays down that burden we see the consequences in Ukraine, in Libya, in Egypt and Sudan as we previously observed the consequences of such demurral in Somalia and in the Congo.
The question is not whether America has ever been an empire, it is whether America will exercise its power well, wisely and benevolently. Great power comes with great responsibility, y’know … but refusal to accept that responsibility and act wisely is a choice that leads down two roads — one the path of tyranny, the other to the swamps of anarchy. Decline is indeed a choice, a choice between accepting the reponsibility of power or of abandoning that power and descening into the role of the powerless.
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RES,
Not saying we shouldn’t debate these things, and I sure as hell an’t playing moral equivalency games where you can’t make moral judgements.
Kirk is arguing from the point of view of today (How do we define. imperialism today. Do the Indian tribal grouping in their many forms rise to the level of what we would to day consider a nation?) JDB is trying to put what happened into context of the times (Trying to say well what did people of the past think about this? How did they for their decisions?); i.e., Maybe some the people of the past were making, what I consider to be, the same mistake as we are making now. Confusing the label with the reality. Maybe certain leaders of the past called the Indian tribal groups a Nation because they wanted to deal with them like other nations. Then would treat them like a nation and feel justified holding the group accountable for the actions of a few. This leads to confusing the label with reality.
RES should we let how others use language determine our reality of how we see or think about the world (color our percetion of the world?)?
Or should I look deeper and try to see for myself and decide for myself what the truth of the matter is?
Should I let Kirk or Paul or even you RES do my thinking for me, just so you want label me an idiot or stupid just because I might see the world different than you.
How is this any different than when the left calls people racist, or implies that the US is imperialistic?
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I don’t much care about Kirk’s argument, he can defend that his own self. But it is absurd to deny that language, the means by which we communicate, discuss and evaluate past events, can be disassociated from associations, secondary meanings and penumbra. “Imperial” has certain evocations which force thoughts into a particular direction and its use in this context, like a magician’s “forced card” ploy has the effect of limiting the ability to properly morally evaluate the matter.
Jack Vance’s Languages of Pao explores the implications of word associations, most simply in having the trader’s language associate “stranger” with “opportunity” while the warriors language associated it with “threat.” I recommend the reading of it; it is a classic SF novel.
Because the words “nation” (would you include the “Aryan Nation” amongst your tribal nations? How about “Red Sox Nation”?) and “imperial” have acquired so much baggage their deployment in an internet argument essentially constitutes a form of trolling. They are simultaneously imprecise and inflammatory, the opposite of conducive to careful consideration.
So yes, how others use language should determine how we use words to convey our understanding of reality. We are none of use Humpty-Dumpty, dictating that when we use a word it means exactly what we intend it should mean.
I very much doubt that Kirk, Paul or even I have any interest in doing your thinking for you, Josh. I merely wish you would do it. A certain leeway is granted for sloppy typing, but when incoherency runs throughout, deriving a commentor’s meaning becomes difficult.
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Words have meanings…even if you don’t like the meanings and think they have negative connotations due to historic baggage. In the 19th century the United States acted as an Imperial power against people who had formed what the United States recognized as governments and nations. People that had treaties with the government. I really don’t care if you think the Natives borrowed that civilization or not (who did you borrow your civilization from?). I really don’t care if you think that native attacks on settlers excuses the Imperialism/expansionism (especially since it happened just as often the other way around, nobody was blameless). The word was used in the correct way, the precise way it has always been used, to describe the exact action that occurred. You can move the goal posts all over the field to make that word meaningless. That is a tactic of the Left. It is essentially the exact same thing done to create politically correct terms. It is Newspeak- an attempt to deaden/change the impact of a word because you don’t like the implication of that word. Imperialism is simply expansion. That way you don’t have to think about what that meant. There is nothing wrong about thinking. There is nothing wrong with recognizing both the good and bad that happened because of that Imperialism. In fact you are supposed to learn from history.
If China was expanding into the United States and forcefully moving people out of their way because they claimed that those people were uncivilized by their standards, not utilizing the space they control correctly, or even saying that the United States government is not a real government because the people have too many freedoms such as owning weapons which makes them savages. I damn sure hope that 100 years from now someone is calling that imperialism, because that is the correct word to use.
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RES, (Sarah)
I for got to disable the links be for I posted, So my reply got stuck in moderation.
:-(
But briefly, RES, I haven’t read “Jack Vance’s Languages of Pao” but I am familiar with the concept.
You know how to defeat this? Don’t assume that your point of view is the only one, that when people use a word that it mean the same thing as if you used it or will have the same emotional attachment connotation.
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I’m sorry, Josh — I don’t quite understand what you are saying. I know what a word means when I deploy it, but I am the sort of person who think a dictionary fine leisure reading. I get the impression that while you keep using those words they do not mean what you think they mean.
Given that you repudiate the principle of generally understood meaning in language, it would be absurd to continue this badinage.
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(Disabled the links so that my post wouldn’t getstuck moderation.)
RES,
“Because the words “nation” (would you include the “Aryan Nation” amongst your tribal nations? How about “Red Sox Nation”?)”
To answer your question. No I wouldn’t put those groups on parity, but that is because I can disassociate the label from what something actually is.
A Tribal Nation – A group of people with common culture and back ground.
Aryan Nation – A group of people supporting/promoting Ayran supremacy.
Red Sox Nation – A group of people the come together to suport the Red Sox.
Did you see a common theme of how people use the word nation? Like by using nation to refer to a group of people with something in common that makes a cohesive whole.
Am I going to assume that if some one labels a group a nation they think they are on parity with a State just because Nation can be used that way?
How you use of a label, or the context of how you used it, tells me two things (1) what you think something is and (2) what you want me to think something is.
But what it will not do is automatically make me agree or think the same thing as you. When you say I must except your reality as the truth what you are doing is asking me to let you do my thinking for me, wether or not you are conscious of doing so, instead of looking at the world and coming to my own conclusions; rightly or wrongly.
When our side calls someone an idiot it is just the same as when someone on the left call someone a racist to shut down debate. I don’t want to be known as an idiot or a racist… It’s impossible to disprove a negative. I’m left in the impossible position.
In stead of just saying agree to disagree or we’re just going to throw a label around a treat it as if it is the truth.
It’s up to me to determine what I believe the truth of the matter to actually be.
Googled Nation plus definition:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Nation+definition&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
na·tion
ˈnāSHən/
noun
noun: nation; plural noun: nations
a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
“leading industrialized nations”
synonyms: country, sovereign state, state, land, realm, kingdom, republic; More
a North American Indian people or confederation of peoples.
i.word.com/idictionary/nation
Main Entry: na·tion
Pronunciation: \ˈnā-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English nacioun, from Anglo-French naciun, from Latin nation-, natio birth, race, nation, from nasci to be born; akin to Latin gignere to beget — more at kin
Date: 14th century
1 a (1) : nationality 5a (2) : a politically organized nationality (3) : a non-Jewish nationality b : a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government c : a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status 2 archaic : group, aggregation 3 : a tribe or federation of tribes (as of American Indians)
m.dictionary.com/definition/nation
nation[ ney-shuhn ]
noun
1. a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own: The president spoke to the nation about the new tax.
2. the territory or country itself: the nations of Central America.
3. a member tribe of an American Indian confederation.
With these different but similar meanings how will I ever determine what someone means when they call something a nation? By context and by asking them. What I’m not going to do is assume that the way I use a word is the only correct way of using the word (Kirk).
Obviously because I haven’t come to the same conclusions as you or think the same as you; I must not be thinking.
How about you just tell me the correct answer that will not get or put me in the group you label idiot… Oh wait… You said you don’t wan’t to do my thinking for me. I guess I’ll just keep thinking for myself wether or not you agree with my conclusion.
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No, I have found many people in this world who think quite clearly and reach conclusions different from my own, either by considering factors I disregarded or by assigning different values to variables. Some of them have even persuaded me to change my opinions on various matters. One of them has even persuaded me to marry.
My conclusion that you must not be thinking is based on the presented evidence. Your logical chains tend to skew into irrelevancies and hang-up over trivialities without reaching a validly* supported conclusion.
*Since there seems to some minor problem with the meanings of commonly used terms, in this instance “valid” should be understood to mean through correct logical arguments and supported by the facts in evidence.
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RES,
“Irrelevancies” It might by irrelevant to you, but I not to me.
Facts:
Is it or is it not true that not everyone use words to mean the same thing?
Some use Nation to be synonymous with State. As Kirk was doing. JDB was pointing out not everyone was using Nation in that way at that time.
“Correct Logical Arguments…”
I didn’t even take sides in the argument between Kirk & JDB.
All I fucking did was point out that we shouldn’t assume that the other person is using the words the same way we would use them. That we shouldn’t take the labels people use without also looking at the tontdxted of how they are being used.
Because not everyone use or has the same understand of words and usage.
If I go to england should I expect them to use the words to mean the same as how we use them in the US?
If they do use a word in away I’m not used to, should I call them an idiot and admonish them for not using the word correctly?
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I was very clear that I was not including value judgements when using the word Empire or Imperial. I said so more than once and gave examples. I even gave examples of positive aspects of imperialism. I endeavored to make the meaning crystal clear.
I do not believe those who attacked my conclusions read past the word “Empire” it seemed to be a trigger word. :) Obviously I did not meet the group think criteria here, which seems to skew less libertarian and more right wing.
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It’s possible the response you get is a result of saying things like Obviously I did not meet the group think criteria here…
Or maybe it’s a result of making bold statements, declaring them obvious and factual and then being unwilling or unable to defend them when challenged?
Near as I’ve ever been able to tell, the closest this bunch comes to group think is — as a group, we’d like you to be able to think.
Or do you want to tell me how you only asked for Sarah’s opinion and you’re still waiting?
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There is a group think mentality here. That doesn’t seem to be in doubt.
The fact is I did provide supporting evidence for my contention (more than anyone else provided, in fact everyone else merely provided their opinions without factual evidence) so your statement that I did not is erroneous. Unless there is some time constraint? I merely wanted an answer from the person who runs this site as to her understanding of the word Empire before I continued, when that was not forth coming I immediately posted the quotes above. Of course if you don’t have any evidence to counter the speech from Andrew Jackson as to the United State’s imperial ambitions or the documentation that the Cherokee nation (among others) fit all the criteria of a western nation (which isn’t even required by the definition of the word) then there is very little left to debate.
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There is a group think mentality here. That doesn’t seem to be in doubt.
There you go again, winning friends and influencing people. I realize you move forward without any doubt. Others — well, I have a doubt.
I missed any evidence you provided (days later) WordPress is selectively emailing me comments these days. But I’ll go check it out. I’m assuming you posted a direct answer to the previous challenges…
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Interesting counter-points, we’ll see if anybody wants to respond, particularly after your little ‘group-think’ silliness and the “I am not here to educate you or to prove anything” line.
How you handle your entrance to a community tends to color how the community responds, ya know. And I’m not talking about disagreeing, this is a fractious lot and a couple-three of us are given to butting heads and going on (and on) about minor arcane points and cross-wise communication. (I mean, not me I would never… :| …ahem.)
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I think most of us figured out that he won’t be influenced by facts, and has no desire to actually support his claims.
And, y’know, the “group” prolly thinks that’s bad…..
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Any intelligent person would think that’s bad. [Evil Grin]
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I think he’s still here because Sarah thinks we need a chew toy.
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Could be. [Smile]
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Halfway. The other half is that I stopped paying attention three days ago. Why are you guys still engaging him?
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He still squeaks when bitten down on.
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That was in the thinking-points memo I received…
;-)
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Ah, so you are under the impression this is England? We’ve a few Aussies what play here, and more than one Canadian. Everybody tends to use common American vernacular. It makes communication more convenient.
Do you commonly assume others use words outside of their commonly understood shared meanings? You know what happens when you assume, I trust.
I have largely been under the impression that when one joins a conversation, uses a word or phrase that is clearly misinterpreted, it is up to the newby to say “Excuse me, I fear I did not make myself clear; what I meant, when I said she had a lovely fanny was …”
It would never occur to me to be so arrogant as to demand everybody immediately switch their word associations to conflate with my own. Nor would I think to chastise folk for imagining me polite enough to adapt to the venue rather than expecting the venue to adapt to me.
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RES,
We also don’t live in early 19th Century USofA.
Fuck! I guess I’m just going to have to get off my ass and learn to read minds, so as to not make the mistake of using a word inappropriately.
Or can someone send me a book of US standard usage. I’m going to need one for regional dialects and colloquialisms too.
Is there linked page of banned words and phrases like Gregg Gutfield’s promotes on the show the five. So, I can learn the proper usage of the english language.
I’m also going to needed all of the personal history information of the posters on this site, so as I can use langue that is appropriate to the individual. I don’t want to offend anyone or use language to confuse anyone.
I wouldn’t want to treat people as adults. You now adults those people that take responsibility for themselves and don’t blame others.
Googled muppet plus slang and this was the first entry (The internet is our friend):
Link: en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/muppet
————-
muppet
See also: Muppet
Etymology
From Muppet, perhaps suggesting that the person needs to be directed by others, or is ridiculous.
Pronunciation
(Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈmʌpɪt/, /ˈmʌpɛt/
Noun
muppet (plural muppets)
(UK, Australia, slang, pejorative) An incompetent or foolish person.
Sally is such a muppet, the way she always misses the train.
———-
Since we seem to be putting forth that it OK to insult people in polite conversation I thought I would broaden the lexicon beyound just calling someone an idiot.
First thing I do when someone uses a word in away that I’m unfamiliar with I look it up.
Or I just ask them what did they mean.
What I try to do is never guess, but I’m human, so sometimes I get caught making assumptions as to what people mean. But when this happens I don’t blame them and call them an idiot.
Communication is a two way street and requires effort from both sides.
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Josh, your failure is a) thinking I care that you called me a bad name b) thinking I needed to Google that one to know what it meant c) thinking people are calling you an idiot for failing to “read minds”, thus completely missing the idiotic things you are doing. If anybody is deeming you an idiot it is because you work so very very hard at missing the point that it renders polite discussion with you virtually impossible. All your efforts have been bent in demanding people understand you while making no noticeable effort to understand them.
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RES, You’re a Muppet.
What do I mean?
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That you think me the property of the Walt Disney Corp.’s Henson Associates subsidiary?
Possibly that you are endeavoring to insult me employing the phraseology of some jejune in-group to which you imagine you belong, although that would require I believe you thought yourself sufficiently significant to care what you called me, a premise nobody here is likely to find credible.
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When I think “Muppet”, I think puppet which may lead to “sock puppet” which is an insult in some on-line circles.
Of course, to be “insulted” by this individual isn’t a “bad thing”. [Evil Grin]
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Notice the switch from whether they were imperial to whether they were justified. The second question may be the more important but it’s not the same.
‘Why are we arguing over a word and not the moral implications of what happened?”
Because you used the word.
Because you dug in your heels when called on it, and so concentrated the discussion on the word.
Because it’s difficult to take seriously a call to moral implications when it’s obviously an attempt to weasel out of admitting that you were wrong.
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“In the early antebellum period, which began around 1820, the Cherokee Nation was centered in northwest Georgia, where the town of New Echota served as the capital. New Echota included a council house, Supreme Court building, missionary’s home, farmhouses, and a newspaper office with a printing press that published the Cherokee Phoenix in English and in the Cherokee language. Council minutes, court records, letters, and correspondence provide a lot of information about daily life, as do old copies of the newspaper. The Cherokee Nation included about 16,000 people divided into eight districts. It had a very organized government, justice system, and police force. Christian missionaries taught Cherokee children to read, write, and sing hymns in English. The Bible was being translated into the Indians’ language. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1832 that the tribe represented a sovereign nation within the United States, with the right to govern itself. “-quoted from the North Carolina Museum of History. The other tribes still in existence in the East had similar towns and treaties with the federal government as to their sovereignty.
“The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the Government are the least of its recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters…
All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians have failed. It seems now to be an established fact they they can not live in contact with a civilized community and prosper. Ages of fruitless endeavors have at length brought us to a knowledge of this principle of intercommunication with them. The past we can not recall, but the future we can provide for. Independently of the treaty stipulations into which we have entered with the various tribes for the usufructuary rights they have ceded to us, no one can doubt the moral duty of the Government of the United States to protect and if possible to preserve and perpetuate the scattered remnants of this race which are left within our borders.” – Andrew Jackson 1835 Speak announcing removal of the Eastern Native American tribes
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Mary,
My original observation was:
My point is we seemed more concerded for what to call something than what actually happened. Indians massacre a villiage that’s moraly evil. We massacre a village everyone gets the Medal of Honnor? In the first the first, indians are savages and uncivilized, so we are justifed in bring culture and civilization to them. This leads to the seconded of feeling justified in what we do.
Left (but we do it too, why else are fighting over a label) likes to use labels to control how we feel about things.
“As much as I don’t like trigger warnings, apparently I can be triggered.” – The first line of this post.
Later Sarah said, “And out of her mouth comes the words, “America is an empire, and I guess we’ve hit the decline. Empires don’t last forever, and this is a decline—””
So, when some one accuses us of Imperialism and Empire building it their way of control the narrative. This only works if we buy into that the labels define what something is instead of the other way around.
Just as calling me an idiot doesn’t make me one or even mean that I am wrong. This doesn’t mean that I’m not an idiot, just that calling me one doesn’t make it true.
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@jdb et al
Do get back to me when you demonstrate something that the indigenous peoples created as opposed to copied.
You’re just not getting the point–You throw the term “imperialism” around, willy-nilly, as though it applies to every sort of interaction between nations, when it does not. In the case of the Cherokee, half of the stuff you’re citing as having been indices that they were an independent nation were products of half-bred whites who brought those institutions and innovations over with them. So, tell me: Who the hell took advantage of who, here?
You claim “imperialism”, when there’s damn good evidence for cross-fertilization between ideas and customs of the Iroquois and the same ideas of the founding fathers? Just who dominated who, again?
The term “imperialism” has been assigned a certain loading in the English language via its use and abuse by the various marxian copyists. Use of the term when discussing the settlement of the North American continent is both disingenuous and highly biased. The Cherokee weren’t some nation-state with fixed boundaries that got taken over and suborned, as happened to across Southern Asia. They were an ethnic group who copied and adopted the lifestyle of their more successful neighbors when they showed up, and then got caught up in the fallout from the various unsuccessful wars their fellows waged on the US and the settlers in the region they lived in. What happened to them wasn’t fair, it wasn’t moral, but it also wasn’t “imperialism” as the term is meant. The land they were moved off from was more a porous sponge than it was a distinct territory–It was interspersed with the holdings of whites, freedmen, and other tribes. They got screwed, but they got the same screwing the interned Japanese got. You don’t call an internal security measure “imperialism”. Ethnic cleansing? Yep, it was that.
This is the same linguistic idiocy that is taking place with sexual assault–When you conflate something that amounts to an unwanted groping with an actual rape, you aren’t upgrading the groping to the same status as rape, you’re turning rape into a joke.
The whole thing is synonymous with the left-wing BS that the old Soviet propagandists put out. When they termed what we were did as “imperialism”, the intent was to provide cover for the territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing they were conducting all across their controlled territories. Look at what’s going on in the Crimea today: That’s the end goal they were enabling, with their accusations of “imperialism”, so that they muddied the waters to the point where they could get away with their own criminal enterprises.
Of course, none of your ilk will ever term what is going on in the Ukraine right now as being “imperialism”, now will you? Of course not… It’s not being conducted by the United States you hate so much, is it?
I really hope you fools get to live in the world you imagine would be so superior to this one. Watching you find out what the intellectual swindlers you fell for really think of you would be priceless, as well as watching what they do with your foolish selves once they convince you to cede control to them.
Dupes, the lot of you…
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“we seemed more concerded for what to call something than what actually happened.”
Well, you seem to be very concerned about calling this an empire. And this isn’t imperialism. It doesn’t mean terrible things didn’t happen, but that’s not the definition of an empire. (And to say it’s all about the evil Americans is demeaning to the Amerinds, btw – I hate people who throw around White Man’s Burden thinking.)
Actually, what’s really happening is that you’re beating your chest about how your outrage is so much greater and better than everyone else’s. Do you spend a lot of your time being outraged?
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It is worth considering that human societies, like human lungs, expand and contract as a mere matter of their being. Decrying their “actions” outside of their contexts is a form of moral bullying that reveals an ignorance so deep as to constitute a hostility to human knowledge.
Long ago (mid-Seventies), Beloved Spouse & I took in a one-act play set in the NY state legislature (“Rubbers” — you could look it up) in which one character, whenever argued into a corner would bleat “Starving babies in Biafra” as her trump, her get-out-of-the-argument-free card in order to reverse the intellectual momentum of the debate. I confess to having much the same comedic reaction as to that cry whenever some twit plays the “Trail of Tears” card, the “Race” card, the “Gender” or “Privilege” cards in lieu of making an actual argument relying on facts and reason.
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Interestingly, these tactics only work (in-so-far as they still do) because we as a society actually care about our mistakes and tragedies. Not all do.
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Or Your an idiot card.
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The “you’re-an-idiot” card differs from the ones I mentioned; it is more like the “you’re-blind” card or the “you’re-deaf” card in that its playing is an admission that because of your impairments it is not possible for me to explain/describe this concept to you. A person who can hear has an understanding of a thunderclap that is quite different from that of the deaf person’s; the sighted person’s comprehension of a lightning bolt is far more complete than that of a blind person’s; and an intelligent person’s apprehension of the rain is far more comprehensive than is that of the person whose head is firmly up his bum.
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Laurie,
I did not call the US an empire or imperialistic.
Sigh… And even if I had would you change your mind just because I decreed something to be so. Or would you think for yourself and decide for yourself what is true?
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“My point is we seemed more concerded for what to call something than what actually happened.”
“So, when some one accuses us of Imperialism and Empire building it their way of control the narrative. This only works if we buy into that the labels define what something is instead of the other way around.”
You really are an idiot. Read what you say. You think labels are so bad I swear you probably rip them all off your cans of soup and evaporated milk and stuff before you put them in the pantry. We are concerned about what actually happened, but nobody can explain anything to you, because descriptions (ie labels) are NOT ACCEPTABLE, because they might actually provide communication, or something.
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Bearcat,
“You think labels are so bad…”
No! I do not think labels are bad!
I just do not think using how someone else labels something as the sole way of determining what something is is a good way of determining what something is.
Take a look for yourself when determining if the label is correct or not.
Do not take someone else definition of something as fact with out first determining for yourself if it is true.
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“would you think for yourself and decide for yourself what is true?”
And now we get patronizing along with chest-beating.
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Maybe yes, Maybe no.
Many of them were not “nations” as Europe and the US thought of nations.
While I’m not sure about the Iroquois Confederacy, it’s hard to call a tribal group a “nation” by European standards when there is no group/individual who could make agreements on the behalf of the tribal group and enforce those agreements.
That was one of the big problems with many treaties between the US and many of the Indian “nations”.
The US would make an agreement with one of these “nations” but the people the US the agreement with could not prevent members of their “nation” from raiding US communities.
If the “leaders” of a “nation” can’t prevent their own people from starting a war with another nation, then they don’t deserve the name “nation”.
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You’re expressing an argument I was meaning to more succinctly and better than I would have.
The key missing ingredient in the indigenous groups? Cohesion. If some group of the tribe decided it didn’t like the deal one of the other groups did, then they felt perfectly free not to adhere to it. Witness the results of any random negotiation entered into with a tribe that had a “peace chief” and a “war chief”.
You aren’t building an empire when you organize anarchy, much though the intellectuals would like to describe it as such. The British Raj was an empire, as it moved in and co-opted native Indian institutions and governments. Here in the US? For the love of God, we had to provide some form of governmental entity for the majority of the tribes before we could even begin to engage them in some kind of relationship that could even begin to be described as “proto-imperialism”. I’m not sure what term we would use, but when you’re the one who’s providing the basic concept of something more sophisticated than “strong-man chief”, you’re not engaging in imperialism. There’s nothing there to “imperialize”…
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You might want to ask the Navajo Nation if they consider themselves a nation?
So what I’m getting from this to be a nation and civilization (both terms have been used inter changeably) you have to believe in owning land and fixed boarders.
You don’t believe in owning land will just force you to move over there.
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No, you missed that a Nation requires “unity of authority”. IE some group/individual who can make/enforce agreements with other nations. The current Indian Nations have such groups/individuals. The past Indian “nations” often lacked such groups/individuals. As I said, if members of a “nation” can’t be stopped from raiding other “nations”, then it’s not a real nation.
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Oh, that’s right I forgot you got to have rulers that can force everyone inline even if it’s not in their best interest. With civilization like this I do believe we deserve the ruler we get. How enlightened of us that we saved the Savage Red Man from a life of freedom.
:-)
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You really are an idiot. Good Bye.
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Here’s the deal. If I’m the idiot you believe me to be telling me is just a wast of time. I’m an idiot after all. One with a hard head.
I was just reminded of a scene from Williamson’s Freehold:
To think that what we have now might be the pinnacle of civilization… [Sad Face].
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Josh, thanks for that excerpt. I just got the book on Amazon for my kindle. (It’s free, but being the first volume of a series…. the first hit’s always free.)
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The whole series is good reading.
:-)
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mmm, Freehold. In a stunning act of capitalism, despite having owned the free version for nigh on 14 years now in multiple ebook formats, I’m on the pre-order list for the limited signed edition hardcover.
Proving, just like WitchFinder, you can indeed sell something that you also give away for free!
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It is a basic definition of a country that its government is responsible for all attacks launched from it.
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Well said.
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Dang it Kirk, you didn’t leave me anything to chew on.
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Sorry… I was in the mood for Tofudebeest, this morning, and didn’t mean to hog the carcase. Feel free to join in, if you like.
I can’t say I particularly enjoy the taste of vapid foolishness…
I’m told it’s good for you, though.
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“Culturally hegemonic”? Twaddle.
I don’t believe we’ve invaded any foreign country and forced them to eat Big Macs at gunpoint. Your conflation of voluntary adoption with hegemony disqualifies any pretense of intellectual integrity.
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As near as I can figure, “cultural imperialism” means that their citizens would rather consume American books and movies than the state-approved local product, and the “solution” is always “ban American stuff” rather than “make our stuff not suck”.
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I have to agree and that is why I call it unintentional hegemony. As a society we are not intentionally dominating other cultures and there is no single American entity in charge of pushing our culture on the world at large, our success has done this for us.
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No, it also means that we consume their local product, too. Notice that when they use our stuff, or we use theirs, we’re at fault.
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I think that it’s a subset of: We’re always wrong.
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When they use our stuff it’s cultural imperialism. When we use their stuff it’s appropriation.
Obviously the only solution is to never learn from one another.
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Appropriation is a form of cultural imperialism.
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…which means we’re being “invaded” by Japan?
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There is always reverse colonization of ideas. Look at the greatest fears of Victorian England.
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Growing up I saw the British invasion. No, I don’t mean 1812. I mean the one in the 1960s, from the Beatles to Twiggy, mods and mini-skirts. Did it take over the country? In the end, not really.
Japanese invasion? That was the bug-a-boo du jour of the 1980s. The import of Japanese goods has been with us for decades, starting with inexpensive goods, moving into affordable technology and now offering luxury cars. But if you wish to point to anime and Hello Kitty — well the British invasion had a more encompassing cultural effect. (Although the imagining an army of Hello Kitty does suggest things to my mind…) Recently Japan had been hoping to be crawling out of an decades long economic slump. World wide markets and the effects of Fukushima may have ended that.
This is a very large country and even marginal interest groups can appear large. I once heard a speaker comment to this point. He mentioned that there are barbed-wire collector’s conventions that attract 10,000, but most people in this country aren’t even aware.
Now if you wished to postulate China taking over? Well they are now picking up our debt, and plying us with low cost items, producing a collapse in our own manufacturing which, although still more efficient, cannot compete due to labor costs. It is said that with our present economic growth rate China will soon overtake us as the biggest world spender.
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“An army of Hello Kitty?” Here you go:
http://onastick.net/sitz/images/
Yeah, that’s pretty alarming… :)
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this is why you should have read “Hello, Cthulhu.” That would enure you to anything
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Shouldn’t they be wearing pink?
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There’s also an SKS or some other AK-style weapon that’s pink with a Hello Kitty emblem on the stock. I think it’s called an HK-47.
…which leads me to imagine the horrified reaction of a certain assassination droid from the Knights of the Old Republic game. O_o
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There’s a guy at my local game store who let his daughter pick the paint scheme for his Tau army (that’s an army for the same miniatures game that’s depicted in the image above). And yes, she picked the Hello Kitty paint scheme.
It’s amusing.
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Seriously, hello kitty tau? You gotta get that guy to get some photos of that and up on the interwebz. I got a buddy languishing out in Korea right now on rotation who would die laughing.
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You know Harlan Ellison wrote Hello Kitty’s biography. At least that’s what I think it’s about, with a title like “I have no mouth and I must scream.”
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No, Hello Kitty’s biography is entitled, ‘I Have No Mouth and Everybody With Taste Must Scream’.
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That kinda breaks the Harlan Ellison part of the joke.
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That’s OK, there’s always room for another Harlan Ellison joke. Like f’rinstance, one could point out that if Harlan Ellison did have no mouth, he could still find a way to scream. Whereas it’s kind of hard to imagine Hello Kitty screaming about anything.
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The thing about the Japanese invasion is that we seeing our owns stuff sent back, better. If anything, the US has invaded Japan, inculcated the country with OUR values and culture and we’re seeing those reflected back at us. The same thing is happening in China, slowly. The problem is that the custodians of AMERICAN culture don’t believe in it anymore and want us to reflect the failed ideas of a moribund Europe.
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“The problem is that the custodians of AMERICAN culture don’t believe in it anymore and want us to reflect the failed ideas of a moribund Europe.”
Yeah… Tell me, just who the hell appointed these jackasses the custodians? I sure as hell didn’t, and I’m getting ‘effing tired of listening to their bullshit. It’s high time we fired these so-called custodians, and took everything back from these self-hating assholes.
You can identify a continuous thread from the days of Upton Sinclair and his fellow progressives–Things were better here than anywhere else in the world, and yet they demanded some kind of utopian paradise that is likely unattainable this side of the Christian idea of heaven. Finding that things weren’t perfect, they instead turned against everything that they knew and which had nurtured them, and have been steadily engaged in tearing it down. With the intent of replacing it with God-alone-knows-what–Signally, they haven’t even conceptualized anything better, or how “better” would actually work. All they know is that they want to destroy that which exists, and replace it.
Don’t ever ask with what, though.
I was so tired of reading and listening to these assholes when I was 18 that I couldn’t countenance the idea of four years in a classroom listening to their blithering idiocy. Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of them would be among the first to go up against the wall, if their fantasized revolution ever came, but they’re too fucking stupid to recognize that, or understand how thoroughly they’ve been taken in by intellectual con men.
Instead, we have to put up with the likes of Mr. Baird above, who I’m afraid has been educated far past the level of his actual intelligence. If you can’t identify the inherent flaws in the arguments presented by self-hating leftists like Howard Zinn, and are still regurgitating the slop that passes for thinking by that sort twenty years after you leave the classroom… Well, you might be a total dumbass. I’m sorry if that’s hurtful, but there’s no other way to effectively phrase it.
The thing that gets me about Mr. Baird’s ilk is that they are completely at home with the idea that the United States is an evil empire, but they utterly fail to extrapolate to the next issue, which is what things would look like absent the US…
All you really need to do is examine the relations between the Russian Empire and the native Alaskans, and you get a vision into what things might have looked like for the indigenous peoples in a theoretical Russian America. It sure as hell wouldn’t have been any better than what actually happened, but it’s far more likely that it would have been exponentially worse.
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“All they know is that they want to destroy that which exists, and replace it. Don’t ever ask with what, though.”
The answer doesn’t matter to the Left, as long as they’re in charge when the dust settles. Which is why, increasingly, I fear we aren’t going to vote our way out of what’s coming.
I really hope Sarah is right, at least in the long term. Unfortunately, the short term is going to look pretty grim. Actually, I think it’s going to look a lot like the old Missouri/Kansas Border War, except that this time all fifty states will get to play, and they’ll get to play it with twenty-first century weapons and communications.
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Soap box, ballot box, cartridge box.
The left knows how to use the first two, very well. What they don’t factor in is that the people they want to break to the yoke know far better than they how best to utilize the third. Most of the left-ish military folks I knew on active duty were not particularly competent at the skills or mentalities that go into war-fighting. If you really think that the sort of commander that disarms his own troops so that they’re so much pistol-fodder on their home turf will be able to inspire any kind of effective loyalty or trust from men who he wants to lead against their own kin…? Well, were we to be running a recruiting drive, who the hell do you think is going to attract the competent warriors? He who says “Come one, come all… I trust you armed at all times…” or he who says “You can have your weapons when you’re out conducting operations. Meanwhile, you’re disarmed.”.
Yeah, that ain’t happening. They may think they have the military under their control when they’re done purging it, but they’re also going to find out that the discarded bits and pieces they drove out of their New Model Army are the ones that actually, y’know, are the most effective at fighting. Most of the dipshits they’ve been promoting these last few years aren’t actually soldiers, they’re bureaucrats with the unfortunate need to carry weapons occasionally. And, it shows–Notice any won wars, lately?
They may get down to the point of turning the organs of the state against most of us. At that point, the organs of the state are going to find out what a terminal case of cultural gas gangrene looks like, as the rest of the organs and muscle turn on them, carrying out the simile.
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It’s all a part of “Critical Theory”. You don’t HAVE to offer a viable alternative, you just have to destroy everything with criticism until only socialism/Communism are left. That was the gift to Academe from “The Frankfurt School.” Bill Whittle did an excellent piece on this a number of years ago.
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Every time I hear someone mention “we can’t vote our way out of this”, I’m reminded of an awesome post by Robb Allen. RTWT, but here’s one of the key grafs:
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Unfortunately, it really is true that you can’t vote your way out if the vote is sufficiently rigged. I believe Robb Allen has exactly the right of it.
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The MSM tends to obscure the fact that W. Edwards Deming sold Japan on his industrial philosophy only after American unions and manufacturers said “No, thanks, we’ll just continue slapping bigger fins on our cars; we’ve no need nor interest in making them better and cheaper.”
When they were promoting adopting Japan’s industrial policy they were carefully silent about Deming but readily saw the benefits of planned industry (a scheme which tends to produce remarkable wealth for the planners.)
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There’s more complexity to the issue than just “Deming was a dishonored prophet in his own nation…”.
There is a definite cultural problem here in the US, one that manifests itself when bureaucracies, companies, and other agencies ossify.
In Europe, if you’re a union member in some unions, screwing up and making the union look bad gets you fired and ostracized from the union. Here in the US, the unions have turned into criminal conspiracies that are geared towards keeping their members employed, no matter what. When you have teacher’s unions intervening to keep convicted pedophiles working, you have an institutional problem.
The Swiss NCO association for their Army is an organization that worries about the professional standards for its members. They lobby for professional issues, and publish books that are intended to support higher professional standards. The US equivalent? All they worry about is lobbying for benefits.
The US is best at things that are ad hoc, short-term, and highly specialized. The minute things get set into stone, and a bureaucracy more than a meager layer or two builds up, the whole thing turns into a kleptocratic nightmare. We do start-ups, not institutional longevity. That, we can’t seem to manage very well.
In Europe, you can trace a direct line back to some medieval guilds for some professional organizations. For the US? Not a flippin’ chance. Nothing we’ve built organization-wise has that kind of longevity as a viable organization. I don’t know why, but that’s just a damn fact of life. Every major institution we’ve built has been captured by the bureaucrats and leftists, because that’s what they do. All they’re fit for is running petty bureaucratic organizations that are generally homeowner’s associations writ large.
I think the biggest problem is that competent Americans get bored, once they’ve solved a given problem. They go on to fix other things, work in other jobs and organizations. Meanwhile, the termites creep in. Look at Hewlett-Packard: One generation of genius, and before the next passes, we’ve got Carly Fiorina running things into the ground.
As a nation, we’ve got a unique genius for start-ups and innovation. Long-term anything? Fuhgeddaboudit…
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I like to think that it’s simply our own shortsightedness and stupid infatuation with labor unions that makes American labor uncompetitive. The Chinese are simply taking advantage of our dumbness.
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Not in 30 years.
These days most of our stuff comes from China, Mexico (and central and south America–mostly food and some clothing), Vietnam, and India.
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According to a small sign at my local supermarket, the “Chinese Peas” that they carry come from Guatamala.
:P
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Culturally, yes I think it’s safe to say we’re being invaded by Japan.
:P
At the political level, there’s an attempt to allow us to be invaded by Europe.
>.<
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“America lost in Vietnam!”
“Is there a Starbucks in Saigon? A Pizza Hut? American films being shown at the theater?”
“Yes.”
“Then we won.”
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Oh I hate that cultural imperialism canard. They have no *redacted* idea how insanely diverse culture can be even here in the states. I can drive six hours to my mother in law’s and feel like I’m in a completely different country and I haven’t even left the state.
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Yep. We are as fish out of water in Ohio as in Portugal. In some ways more, because there’s a deceptive similarity to the surface…
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Sometimes they recognize we have different sub-cultures– they just think it’s BAD.
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Which state?
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Texas :-)
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Where are you in our fair state?
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Houston. Ish.
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I spent a summer in Houston once. Doing outside sales. In a car with no air conditioning. The people were great, but the climate felt like what I imagine Hell is like.
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It’s an interesting city. It sprawled very much outward instead of going up, so you have lots of bizarre micro cultures. There’s one area that was mostly rural maybe 50 years ago, but has now been swallowed by the city. This results in very strange sights, like pimped out ATVs and people riding horses in the same neighborhood
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And it’s still sprawling.
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Know the feeling, Here in Boise we actually have a street of mini-malls, a Walmart, Gas Stations, and smack in the middle of a stretch of it is a house with a corn field, and cows.
Still blows my mind a decade after i moved here.
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It froze in Hell this year. Hell, Michigan, that is. :)
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Hell means light in German. And by both Hell, MI, and Dante, parts of Hell are perpetually frozen. Like parts further north, there are rivers fed by glaciers there. But the glaciers, like Dante’s (frozen) Inferno, are far underground.
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I live in NYC; I can achieve the same effect multiple times with a few minutes of walking. :-)
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” I can drive six hours to my mother in law’s and feel like I’m in a completely different country and I haven’t even left the state.”
Back in high school I could tell which school district girls went to by their “accents”.
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There is one area of American culture where “cultural imperialism” could be fairly charged, and that’s Hollywood. I’ve heard, and would love verification pro or con if anyone knows, that Hollywood studios have contracts with movie theaters that say “You want to show any of our movies? You have to show all of our movies.” So if a movie theater overseas wants to show, say, Iron Man (and they do, because they know it’ll make ’em a lot of money), they also have to show Studio Stinkers #1-10 as well. Result: much less theater time available for local movies.
In other words, the one example of American “cultural imperialism” that’s valid is actually the result of a monopoly throwing its weight around. But since that monopoly is, well, doing what monopolies do… pretty soon the rise of competition (in the form of indie movies) is going to remove that problem as well.
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Well, what do you call it when the idiots in Hollywood kowtow to the Nazis as they did before WWII, or the Chinese government today? Is that “cultural imperialism”?
Given the generally distorted and negative impression most foreigners actually get from watching Hollywood movies, I’d like to see a lot less of them exported. You really don’t want to know how shocked certain Middle Easterners can become, when they actually encounter the real America away from the coasts…
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I call it “the idiots in Hollywood being the idiots in Hollywood”, and it’s orthogonal to whether they’re leveraging the power of their successful movies to push their unsuccessful ones on people who don’t want them.
Totally agree with you on the distorted view many (even most!) foreigners have of America from movies. I’ve seen it myself plenty of times.
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Even if the United States were to collapse due to some unforeseen event, the ideas that made it great would survive it and, ultimately, thrive and reclaim dominance over the area.
Great ideas never die. They just linger beneath the crappy ideas until those bad ideas are discarded.
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Great idea may not die, but people who hold them do. Especially in gulags or in back alleys.
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Not all of them. Just we who tend to be more vocal.
Instead, others get smart and start to spread it in those very same back alleys.
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Such a great post. Every time I hear people talk about how it’s all over for us, I remember how my grandparents used to tell me stories about living through the depression and dust bowl, and they said their grandparents had told them stories about living through the civil war and reconstruction. We’ll get through it and be fine.
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Something gets better, something else gets worse. There is never a situation when everything gets better at the same time, not in the real world.
And it’s always easier to notice the parts which are getting worse. Perhaps even more so when lots has gotten better, then they are the few pimples in the otherwise lovely face and so far more noticeable than those same pimples would be on a butt-ugly one.
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That is very true
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IMO those people who think the US is an Empire deserve to live in Tom Kratman’s “American Empire” (in _Caliphate_).
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I think it will take a lot more concentrated ruling class stupidity to seriously make a dent … but cleaning up after their follies will take a long time. Longer than it did to commit the various follies to begin with. Not looking forward to the work, but oh, well … sometimes I feel like I have spent my life to date cleaning up after the 60s generation.
My. 02. YMMV
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“sometimes I feel like I have spent my life to date cleaning up after the 60s generation.”
Not all the sixties generation but what we’ll call the “glittery” parts. Amen sister. Every field I entered, they’d just messed up with their combination of marxism and entitlement.
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America is a nation that turned a vast wilderness into a thriving breadbasket in the span of a couple hundred years.
When the collapse comes, there’s no reason to believe we can’t do it again.
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We can do damn near anything! Why? Because when a job needs doing, an American rolls up his sleeves, spits on his hands, and grabs hold and WORKS. The Germans in WW2 noted this. The Americans were not soldiers – no discipline by German standards, little military tradition.
They thought we would be pushovers. Nope, we had a job to do, and by God it was going to get done. Lots of us still have that attitude, and it is a juggernaut.
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yep.
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Part of the American Psyche is that, from the lowliest employee to the highest levels, we can do a better job than the person in charge. My father often remarked to me that soldiers in other armies would have to be ordered/led by their officers and that eliminating them, they would wait for orders from higher rather than carrying on. Whereas with US soldiers, you eliminate the officer and the next most senior man takes over and carries the mission forward without waiting for the next person in the chain of command to tell them to.
Would the phrase, “It’s easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission,” have arisen in any other country?
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Unfortunately even the military is being infected by the entitlement idiocy.
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Totally logical, from the standpoint of the LGOPs. The sound of the guns is where you’ll find everybody else.
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Generally, eliminating the officers and senior NCOs in an American unit just means that you’ve managed to eliminate what restraints there are. The results are going to vary, but you’re not going to like the outcome.
My Lai was one such event–Most of those kids that participated in that had more in common with J.M. Barrie’s Lost Boys than they did with any formalized American Army unit. See also all the various militia units fighting in the Indian Wars, and other conflicts.
Part of the reason that they locked down the militias in the National Guard acts was that they were tired of what happened when the average militia unit started operating on their own. Some Regulars termed them “rabble”, but the effects they had were devastating. Usually on the putative enemy, but not always.
I honestly think we’d be having a lot fewer problems with the Federal level over-reaching, if we still had locally-financed and led militia units. I know the BATF would have to think twice before coming into town to try a Waco-style operation, if they knew the locals were running the modern equivalent of the artillery pieces that the old-time militias often outfitted themselves with…
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Yep, or some of the rigs the old-school privateers had. A good head ‘splody response to one of the “the Second Amendment means muzzle-loaders, not AR-15s” is to point out that private individuals could, and did, own fully-armed and crewed ships of war which were capable of reducing an entire town.
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I’ve often wondered what a US military set up on the principles of free enterprise might accomplish, and what it might look like. I dare say that Blackwater was only a hint…
Things keep going the way they are, and someone like H. Ross Perot is going to get the idea of hiring someone like Prince to build himself a private-enterprise army, and we’re going to find out. Should the fantasies of the jihadists ever come true, and they manage to help crash the US government, they may not like what replaces it any better.
A truly cut-throat US military analog would be selling rights to fly Predator drones on the open market, and offering cash rewards the way we used to pay privateers for prizes. Oh, you bagged the latest head of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb with your private Predator drone? Sweet… Here’s a half-million dollar prize. It’d be a nice sideline for a corporate security element…
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“The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis.”
Rommel
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I think that’s been misattributed to Rommel–The closest I’ve ever been able to get the provenance on that quotation is “from an unidentified German staff officer” who was getting debriefed after WWII. He’d apparently been an exchange officer here back when Marshall was still running the Infantry School, and was also a bit of a dishonored prophet in Germany over his appraisals of US military potential. Don’t ask me his actual name, because I was never able to nail that one down. It may be as apocryphal as my other favorite US Army quote:
“One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine…”, which was supposedly taken from a junior Soviet officer’s notebook.
Actually, I think that’s a pretty good description of why and how the “intellectual elite” are really irrelevant to what happens in this country: Nobody who really matters out in flyover country is actually listening to these assholes.
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Congruent to a point I made somewhere around here. Therein lies my hope.
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I’ve seen it attributed to Rommel quite a lot, but also attributed to the “unidentified German staff officer”. No idea how you would ‘prove’ who said it.
And yeah the American doctrine quote is apt.
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That’s because the US military is chock full of smart people who are constantly bitching about how jacked up the doctrine is and only follow it because they’re being watched. Once the shooting starts, however, oversight becomes rather…lax. The result is hundreds of small groups going “screw this, I’m doing it my way.” Some of those don’t work, most of them do.
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After twenty-five years before the mast, so to speak, I have a somewhat more cynical take on things: Actually reading and following the doctrinal publications is hard, and most officers and enlisted outside a few select, anally-retentive branches don’t bother with it. It’s also hard to write, so they mostly don’t bother with that, either. Try looking up a Marine publication that covers embarking on a Navy ship, sometime: There isn’t one. Everything about that task is institutional knowledge, passed down through units. There aren’t any manuals, or at least, the last time I needed to do it, there weren’t. Marines aren’t really good at documenting things…
Engineers write, read, and follow doctrine pretty well. So do the doctors and medics, and the higher technical echelons of the commo world. The rest of them? They constantly pull s**t out of their asses at random, it sometimes seems. I don’t know how many times I found myself working with the Armored or the Infantry types, staring at my field manual in utter bewilderment as they did something that wasn’t in the damn book. And, which made no earthly sense to me, as an Engineer NCO, either.
After a bit, you just go with the flow, and try to anticipate whatever idiocy you need to, in order to support them. “Oh, you want me to ride along here, with the command group? Instead of following doctrine, and being up where I can influence things by reconning and reinforcing the bridges and what-not? Hokee-dokee… We’ll do that, then…”.
Followed by walking off muttering under one’s breath, as a learning event takes place and they figure out that it’s damn hard to move Engineer assets up a one-lane road in the Korean mountains in the wintertime, whilst the road is occupied by a motionless column of Bradleys and tanks that is now having to wait for someone to come around from the other side, through theoretical enemy territory, to clear the bridge they just broke by taking a Class 60 tank over a Class 30 bridge…
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I come from the other end of the Navy. In the nuclear world there’s a procedure for everything (a common joke was the posted procedure for using the head). Right up until something really needed to be fixed. Then it was “Gauch, take care of it.” followed by a couple of hours of head down in the bilge screwing in a new valve while seawater poured out of the hole, usually accompanied by a comment to the new guys “You don’t get to work like this for YEARS. If ever.”
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Yeah… I imagine that a good marker for things being really ‘effed up in the Navy is the same as it is in the Army: A whole bunch of very senior people coming by to look at the problem, and who walk off after seeing it saying things like “I’ve never seen that, before…” and “Geez, get Ted down here to look at this one… He’ll love seeing this….”.
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Oh, MAN I had to laugh at that one. When I was in Afghanistan, I saw this kind of thing all the time. This is why NCOs have and always will run the Army. Because officers worry about doctrine and strategy, but typically don’t know which way to turn a bolt so an engine can run. Good officers take a cursory look at what the NCOs do and try to understand their job a little while making sure Soldiers who put mission first and think about Soldier care get promoted to SNCO positions. you can trust your NCO corps, things run themselves. Most Soldiers learn doctrine as far as their technical specialty and don’t bother with the rest. But we still feel free to deviate from doctrine as the need arises. Was it Jeff Cooper who said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”? The Army runs on duct tape, zip ties and 550 cord. Improvisation is the key to victory. Your ability to inflict pain, chaos and death on the enemy is limited only by your imagination and the neverending capacity Congress has for failing to understand war.”
I recently had a discussion with a 2LT who approached me and another NCO. “Gentlemen,” he said, “This is the commander’s intent for training. [INSERT PIE-IN-THE-SKY HERE].”
“Sir,” I replied, “I’m all on board with that, however, we don’t have the support necessary to carry it out.”
“It’s your job to carry out the commander’s vision!”
“And I’m on board with that, sir, but we’ll need at least another Company’s worth of support to serve as OPFOR, and to serve in roles X, Y and Z because of A, B and C. If Battalion can make that happen by this weekend, then we’re all set and we’ll move under this plan. However, in the absence of that, my recommendation is 1, 2 and 3. Unless you and the commander know something I don’t, in which case I’m happy to learn.”
The 2LT turned about five shades of purple, and said, “Proceed with 1, 2 and 3 for the time being, and I’ll go discuss it with the commander.”
We saluted and moved out. The other NCO (who outranked me) turned to me and said, “I’m glad you were here. I wanted to stab that arrogant SOB in the throat!”
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Classic short US Air Force version – “The NCOs run the military, the officers just think they do.”
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The Strategic Air Command version, circa 1975: “If we don’t know what we’re doing, chances are the enemy won’t either.”
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That’s the thing about America, most of the working class are too busy holding down a job to be out at a protest, so the Occupiers who feel free to crap on your doorsteps are the ones who get the press. But screw the working class long enough, and you’ll wake the sleeping giant.
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The wonderful thing about free market capitalism is that when permitted to practice its “Creative Destruction” it proves a phoenix, arising anew from the ashes of “decline”.
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Sadly, I’ve heard from entirely too many people that the breadbasket I live in should be allowed to revert to wilderness.
And the federal government is quite sympathetic with their point of view.
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Go get your neighbours to read about the recent Somerset floods in the UK which were caused entirely by the deliberate (in)actions of faceless government bureaucrats.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/flooding/10655005/The-flooding-of-the-Somerset-Levels-was-deliberately-engineered.html
Then when enough of them have read it start suing the EPA or whatever other federal bureaucracy is mismanaging things to bring back wilderness. You have to do it before they get far enough down the path
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The Endangered Species Act trumps all. The salmon are endangered (OK, maybe not the species themselves, but a certainly the local genetic strains of the species!), so irrigation is evil. (As are logging, grazing, hydroelectric power, and mining.)
Not to mention that a Federal Judge decreed that federal regulations outweigh our state constitution when it comes to water rights… (And the 9th Circuit was more than happy to leave that decision in place.) I should note that this case was tried and resolved under Bush II.
They’ve gone too far down that path. They’ve enthusiastically been heading down it since Nixon, with the support of a majority of the nation’s population.
Legally, there’s not much that can be done.
But the Sagebrush Rebellion still smolders.
I’m considerably more pessimistic about what happens when the crash hits than our lovely host is.
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Delta Smelt (a tiny, afaik completely useless fish) versus the Central Valley Farmers. Guess who wins?
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The thing that really gets me about that subject is that as far as records go back, there has been roughly a five-month period of no rain in the majority of California. So historically, you’d expect low river flows in the summer. But do the river releases follow that pattern? No, they do not.
And Governor Brown wants to build tunnels to send water south with “a more modern approach” for billions of dollars (which the state does not have.) As a very lengthy article on water in the Delta pointed out, when you sink lots of money into something, you want to get your money’s worth out of it… and once they start draining the Delta, it’s going to get saltwater backlash, and it will be flat-out ruined for farming. So dismissing farmer fears because there’s only a few of them, and thousands of golf courses in Palm Springs (the highest per-capita water-using county in the state)… well.
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Yeah, California is headed for some hard times. The real story there, is that the city folk are gradually encroaching on the farmer’s water, which this “endangered smelt” thing is just the opening wedge for. Go digging into the background on what’s going on with regards to the canals, and just what is happening behind the scenes with water rights in the central valley, and you’ll find yourself just shaking your head at the incredible stupidity of it all.
And, when you consider the historical extreme weather that California has been prone to? Oh, joy…
Take my advice on this one: If you live in the Los Angeles basin, get the hell out, and stay out. When things go bad down there, they’re going to go bad in a huge, and entirely unrecoverable way. Los Angeles is only days away from death by thirst, starvation, and lack of fuel. There are not enough reserves stored locally to keep that metro area alive for more than a week or two, and past a certain point, there is no recovery possible. You can’t even effective evacuate the region–Where the hell would they go? The Mojave desert? One tank of gas gets you to the middle of it. It doesn’t get you across it.
California has had massive, lengthy droughts and equally massive flooding, both on a scale and timeframe that would pretty much destroy the state. You can go back in the archaeological record to confirm this, and you can see it in the written historical records we have. Nonetheless, we’ve persisted in populating that state far past a sustainable level for such eventualities, and we’re likely to see a bill for that come due.
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Point your favorite search engine at “ARKstorm” or alternately “Great Flood of 1861” for what could happen to the West coast. And as Kirk alludes, the archeo and geo records indicate this was not really all that rare.
If you think the complaints from out here are bad now due to the current drought, imagine the result of a winter or two like 1861/2.
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If Sacramento washed into the Pacific (preferably while the legislature were meeting), to paraphrase the late, great Sam Houston, “G-d help the fish downstream.”
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Heh.
Though per the ARKflood event description, it would be more like the Pacific falling into Sacramento.
The stories from the 1861-2 flood makes interesting reading – especially the part about the configuration of the extant levees around Sacramento actually increasing the floodwater depth in town by 10 feet or so, until they had a chain gang go tear a hole in them to let the floodwaters out.
And that is exactly how California government is still run today.
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Seen that in the town where I grew up (well I grew up 20 miles out of town, and we were smart enough to live on a hill not in a swamp, but it was town where I went to school). When the waters go over the levee, or wash a hole in the upstream end, what you really have is a dam, holding all the water inside a great big lake that used to be called a town. After the third “100 year flood” in a decade, they decided it was a “500 year flood”. It never seemed to occur to them that when you build a town in a floodplain, and either fill in or block off with levees all the areas that used to flood whenever the water got high; well that water is still going to go somewhere. After a time that somewhere is where they filled in 40 years ago, because it is now the lowest place around, because everybody that built after them said, “well they’ve never flooded, so if I build a foot or two higher than them, I know I’ll be safe.
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It’s not that we’ve developed California and populated it past sustainability, it’s that we’ve populated it past what current infrastructure will support. California would be fine if they hadn’t spent the last 40+ years refusing to build new reservoirs or build desalination resources (as expensive as that would be) while antagonizing the farmers and making life hard for the business classes and refusing to develop natural resources. Now the business class is fleeing, the farmers are unable to produce and the cities are running out of water. California will probably rise again, but it will have to reverse course and decimate the size of its government while unleashing entrepreneurs to develop water and other resources. Above all, it has to cut taxes and free up business to cut the cost of living.
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They won’t. I wish they would: I love the place, and wish that I could go back. But the only way I can see it happening is if it crashes and burns with no federal bailout, then rebuilds. Even then, there’s no guarantee. For now, I’m just grateful that most of my kin will finally be out of there by fall. I’ve been nagging them for years, and my parents (among others) finally decided it was time.
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Where’s your home sands oyster?
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For the moment we’re gathering the Oyster clan in north-central Utah. Not our final redoubt, but a place to get our resources together and reinvigorate the tribe, as it were. It beats the heck out of California. Utahns are… odd, but there are some wonderful things to be found in the midst of the monoculture, including a tendency to burning patriotism and a desire to tell the feds to go f^%& themselves. Politely. One of the biggest events of the year in Utah is the Freedom Festival, held just north of here: a multi-day event around Independence Day, with reenactors, cultural lessons, a huge stadium show, commerce aplenty, and the second or third largest parade in the nation on July 4th itself. Coming from CA, where patriotism is viewed as rather gauche at best, it’s a deep breath of fresh desert air.
It may not be our home forever, but it’ll certainly do for now.
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Where is the Freedom Festival held? Salt Lake City?
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Provo. It’s about 45 min drive south of SLC, and home to Brigham Young University, the (in)famous Dragon’s Keep, rabid parking enforcement, Arwen Riddle (IIRC), and several fantastic restaurants.
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Tell me Demae is still there on Center Street.
They are the only place I’ve found sukiyaki here in the states. And they’re at least partially responsible for my wife not being able to eat sushi any more.
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I know what you mean. I flew the coop when I was a newlywed, been gone to a red state for over a decade now. The last of my family will be out next year. It’ll be a load off my mind. California’s ruling class will probably keep running it into the ground until enough middle class has left that they can’t make ends meet without kicking people off welfare (they won’t vote themselves a tax increase, and if they did, it’d be too little too late); then it’ll be time for the angry mobs to grab their torches and pitchforks. That’s when they’ll flee.
I don’t see a federal bailout happening; too many red states would balk at that.
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Probably the only good thing about my mom getting sick is that it’s finally gotten her out of California.
I wouldn’t mind a federal bailout of California if it included a stipulation that revokes California’s satehood. Leave it under federal control (and eliminate their input on President) for 20 years and then bring it back as 3-4 states.
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I’m Northern California. We’re a bit snotty about the south taking the water.
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Oh, and my car gets 400 miles to the tank, which gets me into Oregon (but don’t ever get gas in Ashland; I swung through two weeks ago and gas was thirty cents a gallon higher than it was twenty miles up, in Central Point just north of Medford.
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Oh heck yes. With dang good reason.
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A BIT?!?!
You must be from a very calm area, or trying for the Understatement Award!
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Understatement is one-half of my family style of phrasing. The other is the ridiculous overstatement. So either we say “we’re a bit snarky” or we say “I am angry with the white-hot flaming passion of a thousand burning suns.” It’s actually hard to hit the middle ground in casual conversation.
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Los Angeles gets its water through open water-ways — wasting something like 90% of it through evaporation.
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Open waterways which would be ridiculously easy to either block or foul. Thousands of miles of open concrete-lined water supply canals.
It’s a good thing for Los Angeles that there are no disgruntled farmers with access to earthmoving machinery anywhere at all in California.
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I’ve been through crashes. I’ve read other people who haven’t. This is just the fear of the unknown.
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This are the same people the Bash the US but have no problem with the UN trying to control the world.
Irony
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They have no problem with the concept of empire, as long as it’s a socialist empire.
Sarah, I agree that the United States today is in no meaningful sense an empire. I’m more worried about its future than you are, clearly. I have grave fears for our survival.
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Oh, it’s no irony. They don’t have any problem with imperialism, much as they like to use the word as a term of abuse. But they want their sort of people to be the imperialists, and they want Americans (whom they hate more than any other nation, except possibly the Israelis) to shut up and be good little serfs under their new transnationalist overlords. Perfectly coherent as a political philosophy, except that (of course) it won’t work.
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Yep, I definitely need to eat something this morning – when I read the title the first thing to pop into my head was, “We should have added more yeast.”
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it’s okay. My first thought of the morning was “Freedom Viagra, to correct our electile dysfunction.” Head>desk.
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Aah, did you see the Electile Dysfunction ad for the guy running against John Boehner?
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no. Kate Paulk has been using that for years….
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Yeah, well it is one of the funnier political ads from our side of the spectrum … that and the lady who talks about castrating pigs so she’ll know how to make things squeal
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Look for the JD Winteregg ad on youtube if you want to see it. One of the best lines is, “If you have a Boehner lasting 23 years, seek medical attention.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Y24MFOfFU
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very subtle pun.
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And now you’ve given me the image of a podium rising up to meet the candidate like a drawbridge…
Bad woman.
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And then the ethos of this country will reassert itself. You know, the fundamental ideas of our founding.
Maybe that’s why so many of the wrong sorts want to import entire populations into the country and keep them from joining America.
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I don’t think that’s going to work out the way they hope.
A pliant Mexican peasant who’s been exposed to the evil Norteamericano isn’t the same person he was in Mexico. For examples, see just who’s been starting and running the militias that are starting to grow up to fight the cartels, and why the government is panicking about them. Most of the people running those things are uppity peasants who’ve been north, and who picked up some rather disturbing ideas while they were here…
I don’t think things are necessarily going to work out the same with regards to importing a bunch of Pakistani tribesmen the way they did in England. The two populations are not equivalent, culturally.
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We’re importing various “refugee” groups, too. (Some of which are even genuine refugees…but they’re then settled into situations that will support remaining the way they were in the first place. As with the illegals taking public assistance, my Church is in deep with such “helping.”)
I’m glad to hear some good is coming from the illegals, but I note that’s folks who went back….
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I dunno – too many I’ve met (all good people) still have the old class system in their heads – you stay poor, but it’s the patron’s duty to take care of you. A female friend of mine who’d been a marine officer in the ’60s said she was able to get round a hostile Hispanic soldier under her by playing Lady of the Manor – he didn’t have a place in his head for a female officer as an authority figure, but he did for a female aristocrat, even though he was second generation. (It meant she did things that a marine officer wouldn’t do, but the lady of the manor would, like visit his family and see to his wife when she was sick.)
Of course, there was also the lady from Cuba who was one of my first, and best, bosses – she’d been beaten up repeatedly by Castro soldiers as a child, so standing up to corporate bureaucrats was nothing to her. Some people come here and GET America better than we native-borns.
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Don’t discount how horribly subversive it is when the Mexican peasant comes north and gets exposed to the idea that government is supposed to help him, not just the rico in the mansion…
There’s a really good reason the Mexican government doesn’t want their migrants back. When they do go back, they make demands, and they won’t tolerate the status quo BS, either. You have no idea how disruptive all that money and influence has been and is becoming…
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Yes, and that’s good, but here in Texas, they’re overwhelming our public services – hospitals, schools, other benefits. It’s not cheaper labor when the taxpayer has to make up the difference. Good people individually, but not a good effect en masse – dropping the bottom end of the labor market, which means no starting jobs and falling wages.
I see a similar dynamic with the mass immigration from Europe in the late 1800s-early 1900s – flooded the bottom end of the labor market, lowered wages and working conditions. Then they chose to redress the problems not by gaining skills and moving out on their own, but by creating unions and demanding government intervention – which I think played a big role in the huge expansion of government in the 20th century. Again, good people individually, but they bring the problems of the old country with them. And such large numbers caused a huge change in the country’s dynamic that we still feel to this day.
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This.
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“The international community is not a kindergarten, and there is no benevolent, all-knowing teacher.”
We tried to make one – the UN. Before that, the League of Nations.
It hasn’t worked out all that well, though it’s allowed the bad actors a heck of a lot of protection. (Think of the teacher allowing the bullies to run rampant, as long as every so often they come and give her a hug.)
Just like a lot of SF tropes, when you try to build something out of a lot of mismatched parts, you rarely get the functionality you’re looking for.
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Yep. The “one world government” was ALWAYS such an obviously stupid idea that I can’t understand how sane people like Heinlein liked it. All I can say is the past IS another country.
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one worl gov’t always apeals as long as it is Your favored form that holds power. Sorta like a single emperor is best but only if they are just the right person …. how often is that really going to happen? Like socialism, communism, and full blown Libertarianism, it only works until it hits reality.
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and again my typing shows I need to eat breakfast and get some caffeine in me
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I actually am writing a one-world government for my scifi series…but the only way to make it remotely plausible on Earth was to wipe out 99% of the population.
Yeah, Earth lost the war with its colonies in a very, very bad way.
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My Earth does that too. 1k years up from Thena.
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It seems to me that historical comparisons on roughly the same time scale (Alexander the Great’s ‘Greece’ vs today’s Greece; pre-Mongol Persia vs today’s Iran) would provide plenty of grist for where in the hierarchy of polities a future post age-of-colonization Earth could end up…
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Also, it’s a simple idea. People like their simple ideas, especially when the world seems to get more and more complicated by the day. It’s along the lines of the chat we had at RavenCon (one of many): I could fix all the problems with the world. In the process, I’d likely kill about 20% of the population. Lowball estimate. I’m glad I don’t have much in the way of real power. I feel like I can barely manage a household. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be someone like a senator or head of state. I presume they’re generally narcissistic borderline sociopaths, and don’t have to care about the lives they ruin. That said, we’re heading into a period of significant upheaval. I’m hoping it’s just cultural and technological. I pray it is. I want my children (Working Title, T-14 days) to have some stability. On the other hand, I want them to understand what kind of world they’ll inherit.
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The idea of killing roughly 20% of the world’s population to “protect” everyone was a minor plot point in a recent movie. Unfortunately, I shouldn’t mention which one because it’s a MASSIVE spoiler.
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That spoiler might require a certain level of… insight? (Just trying to make sure I’m thinking of the right spoiler.)
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Killing off 20% of the population is a terrible plan. You’re going to leave far too many idiots alive.
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IMO “one world government” at its *best* is the idea that “everybody will be Americans”.
People like Heinlein could have seen it that way.
Of course, that’s not the way the “one world government” folks are taking it today.
IE it’s “everybody will be like their imagined Europeans”.
To make matters worse, those folks aren’t trying to make non-Westerners into their imagined Europeans.
They are just trying to destroy America. [Frown]
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I think it was a combination of the Depression (and its alleged causes) and WW2. People thought that “unregulated” free enterprise had failed and that after the “success” of the mass mobilization of WW2 that governments could in fact guide things well. It was the same reason that led perfectly sane people to think that the British NHS was the way forward in healthcare.
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They introduced NHS the same time that mass-produce antibiotics hit. Of course it looked better. It was better. Antibiotics will do that.
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Yep. The magic can’t be reproduced here.
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Hey, maybe it would work if it was forced on us. Aliens attack, the result is generations long war and so on. :)
And I could see one world governments working for a while on colony worlds. As long as the colony stayed small (-ish, at least).
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He thought the alternative would be worse; the internal Soviet dead-lock that kept the Seventy Years’ War from going nuclear were not evident at the time. It took Possony et al. years to articulate the Strategy of Technology that the US had been half-unwittingly using to prevent Armageddon.
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Oh, and link for reference: The Strategy of Technology.
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I can actually understand how people might have been fooled by communism and one-world-government the first time around.
Now, though? Nope. I don’t get it. Not after 100 million murders. Not after 70 years of U.N. failure.
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It is SO REFRESHING to see some optimism.
Needed this.
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I think the “America the imperialist country” is another face of the self-hatred that seems to be such a strange part of leftist thought processes. I was reading a couple of SF short stories yesterday that were going on and on about how evil humanity is, and how the “environment” must be protected from humanity, the “invasive species”.
This “environmentalism” religion that’s gotten such play lately drives me nuts. I guess it’s one of the things that happen when people throw out higher level religions, like Christianity. It seems like people need to have something that functions as a religion, so if they don’t have a real one, they turn political fads and fashions into religions.
And of course if you’re entertaining (producing movies and writing fiction), and want to sell the most, you appeal in the ways that are most commonly accepted. Which is, I guess, why we see so many stories about serial killers and child abuse, environmentalism, and the evils of corporations. Because those are the sorts of common ground we seem reduced to.
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“America the imperialist country” is the cry of the leftist trans-nationalists, inside and outside America. It is the cry of any imperialist power when we try to counter their imperialism. It is the cry of any tyrant who objects to America objecting to his oppression. In short, it is the cry of all America’s enemies, foreign and domestic.
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HEAR! HEAR!
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I’m something of a conservationist because there are things – animals, plants, whatever – I like and would like to keep around, but I guess geology was what inoculated me against the fundamental religion type of environmentalism. You study the history of Earth and after life came here it has been the same story again and again and again: the forms life takes are always transitory, while life itself will endure. Something disappears, and something else takes its place sooner or later.
And in the long run humans are the best hope Earth life has had so far. We are the only ones who might be able to spread it outside of Earth. And that is what life seems to be all about, what looks like its ultimate purpose. Spreading and conquering new land for itself.
Damn. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was possible to replace the fundamental environmentalism with that meme? That we were born to bring life to worlds which are now just dead rocks? :D
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That’s why I always specify that I am a conservationist, not an environmentalist. Granted, I then do the academicly-required tap-dance about changes in terminology and current popular cultural definitions versus original usage *tapata, tapata, slide, slide*. I believe in nature preserves, wise use of resources, and considering long-term environmental effects whenever possible. I don’t think salamanders, polar bears, and odd-looking flowers are more important than human life.
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Yeah, there’s a reason I’m emigrating to the US as soon as I can… Even with all the glitter, there are still people with that pioneering spirit and half a lick of sense.
On that note, anyone needing a design engineer/CAD monkey and willing to go through the hassle of hiring a foreign graduate? Will work for cheeeep, building physical prototypes or pretty models in your parametric program of choice… I can also scrub floors and make bad coffee… >.>
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Um… let me see how indie does. How are you at copy-editing? (Joking, joking. It will take years to afford someone, and I’d never take an engineer out of his profession.)
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Many American engineering firms are still hiring, Splodge. You’ve got a shot, but you might want to hurry before the economic stagnation stops hiring. (Of course, if you do get hired and the economy slows further, you might get layed off, but hey, life’s not perfect.)
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How good are you at speaking with an Indian accent? I believe the major requirement for getting an H1B visa is to be from the India subcontinent
(PS that’s a joke – mostly. Also I actually have an H1B, which is why I live in the US)
More seriously, I don’t know where you come from but, RIGHT NOW, I’m not positive that the US is worth moving to. I’d look at Australia or Canada, though I guess it depends a lot on where in the US, what kind of job you can get etc.
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As long as you aren’t a liberal, GHH or SJW, we’d love to have you in Texas.
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I’m English, if it helps.
I was given the same advice by someone else in the comments on one of Larry Correia’s blog posts. Actually, he advised me that the very *best* way to avoid GHHs and Statists is to become a Perpetual Traveller. I spent some time looking into it, and it seems like it would be a very interesting lifestyle… Except it’s kind of hard to do if you aren’t an investment banker or don’t already have significant assets stashed away somewhere. Graduation is in July, and I’d starve without the overdraft, soooo…
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Having been dead, err non-resident, for tax reasons for a year or two I recommend that if you can manage it. Its tough to do, and particularly tough on your resume. Unless (as you note) you can get a job in international finance.
But if you don’t like the UK (and heck I left it too as soon as *I* graduated) then I would definitely look at other countries than the US first. The reason is the visa one.
It’s literally a lottery whether you get an H1B granted and applying for one requires you to pretty much have a resume that says you walk on water as well as a sponsoring employer. The other work visas to the US also pretty much require you to have a job first and the student visas generally require you to pay lots of money to a university. That means it is hard to get a US visa that will legally allow you to work. If you ever plan on legally emigrating to the US, then illegally working here is a bad thing
unless you are from Latin America.Australia has a working vacation visa which allows you to spend something like a year there and work some of the time. That’s a great way to scope out the job market and find a potential longer term employer. I have a feeling there are similar programs for Canada and NZ, there used to be anyway
Also as a UK national you can work anywhere in the EU without any visa and won’t find it hard to work in Switzerland. I’m not sure I’d want to work in most of the EU, but Switzerland would probably work out OK. As might some of the newer eastern parts of the EU.
If you want more ideas email me @gmail.com
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Didn’t Switzerland just recently slap a quota on E.U. immigration? They’re not an E.U. member, of course, but they did allow free movement and employment for a while. That’s changed.
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If you’re an Englishman with an engineering degree, Alberta has the welcome mat out for you. The question then is if you can handle the weather.
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Texas will too.
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Yes, but remember what General Sheridan said: ‘If I owned Texas and Hell, I would live in Hell and rent out Texas.’
Alberta, of course, is Hell (whatever that piffling hamlet in Michigan may claim).
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Alberta’s not that bad May-October as long as you’re near the mountains. I think that’s why my job makes sure I’m usually sent there in October or March. :) I was there in late June once, and it was almost perfect – until the flood came. On second thought, maybe Alberta isn’t a great place to move to.
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I meant I was sent there in November or March, not October – October would be too nice.
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If I ever make anywhere into the southern half of the US during summer, I fully expect to burn and die. I do not tan, I merely combust.
Assuming I can find enough shade, I’m still happy to take that over the constant grey drizzle I’ve grown up with.
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In the South they keep buildings inside at about glacial level.
And you know the weird thing? After thirty years, you suddenly start missing the grey drizzle.
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I wouldn’t call the a/c level indoors in the south glacial. If you’ve ever been caught outside in the middle of the day in the summer. Being outside when it’s 108 degrees F. is no joke. We keep our house at 70 in the summer and 68 in the winter.
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YOU do. In most hotels and public spaces, I need a sweater.
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I’ve found many hotels etc set their lobbies at 75, which is a touch too warm for me.
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My ideal temperature is 70 to 72. Most hotels seem to set it — particularly in the southeast — to the sixties in the summer. Sixties I start dropping brain cells. 50s, I don’t know my own name.
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Hm. If you ever find yourself visiting my environs, bring a space heater. Especially in winter. I like to open all the windows and let the cool breeze blow.
Or I could be a gracious host and bump the thermostat.
:D
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I’ve never encountered such low temps in a public space in a Southern hotel. in the 60’s I wear a sweater. 50’s sweater and a jacket and go to head engineer an ask if there is a problem with HVAC.
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Heh. When it gets below 60, I start noticing that it’s getting a bit chilly.
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could we agree on 70 being a comfortable compromise? If need be I’ll bring a sweater for you.
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Seventy is fine. I’ve not had that issue in TX. The 50 degree lobby/public areas was in Chicago. Worldcon. G-d, I was freezing.
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Office buildings never get the balance right. In winter you dress lightly so you can take off the coat and be comfortable at work. Summers, you keep a sweater or jacket at the office.
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We have all kinds of shade here in North Texas. It’s a set with our high efficiency A/C. My husband and I burn as well. Do what most others do around here(Dallas area) wear sunglasses, go from house to car, to place of employment. It’s like Winnipeg in reverse.
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That’s another issueI’ll need to contend with: Fahrenheit. (and Gallons and Yards and…)
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we have an app for that!
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Fahrenheit-to-Celsius conversion in your head: 50°F = 10°C, and every Celsius degree temperature difference is about two in Fahrenheit: 40°F ≈ 5°C, 30°F ≈ 0°C, … 0°F ≈ −15°C; 60°F ≈ 15°C, 70°F ≈ 20°C, … 100°F ≈ 35°C. In the sane temperature range 0°F–100°F that NYC enjoys, this is more than accurate enough.
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I get cabin fever in the summers. AC’d house, to AC’d car, to AC’d building . . .
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I firmly believe that as long as we don’t ever adopt the metric system, America will never collapse. Practically every country that has adopted slid into socialism or communism either shortly before or shortly after adoption.
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We do use metric a little. 2L bottles of soda. That’s about it.
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It helps that a liter is as close to a quart as makes no difference for household use. But the other metric units don’t convert nearly as nicely.
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It’s good for science, too, as long as you don’t start converting back and forth to Imperial. (I learned gravity as 9.8 m/s^2 and had a lot of trouble when I got to Statics in college and everything was suddenly in feet. Seriously, I’d never done physics in feet before.)
Imperial is great for things you can hold in your hand (such as recipes.) It’s easy to divide by two or by three, whereas with metric the conversions to split a recipe in thirds are a PITA.
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Have you tried HP? I work at their Bosie, Idaho site and i can attest that they have a very large pool of workers with visa’s at the site. And i have spoken with a few folks in their offices in the EU(comes from having a common name), so I’m thinking having localish access to them to apply and get known can’t hurt.
I know they loves themselves some engineers, and with offices damn near everywhere they may be a way to get that US visa you want(or the ability to hit any of their other sites around the world).
Just a thought.
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Heh. You seem to have the same problems I have. I burn easily too. And the weather, well, only Finland can be a bit colder at times, the part where I live our winters can be anything from similar to the British ones to similar to a bit milder version of Siberia. But lots of grey drizzle here too.
I seem to be able to handle dry heat relatively well, while moist heat kills me (that’s sauna. You do not live in a sauna). But I guess if I got the chance to move to States (unlikely unless I win a lottery or something, at my age and with no useful work history plus degree) I might try for someplace like the dryer parts of Texas. In spite of the fact that I might have to start wearing something like a burqa in order not to burn to a crisp during the summers. Maybe a thin one made of something like pure silk one would not be too bad… okay, perhaps something like a long sleeved tunic with trousers or a long skirt and a very wide brimmed hat. As long as the combination covers most skin. I have to dress almost like that here too, during those summers when it’s sunny.
And if you look online, there seem to be pretty good collections of clothes, including very covering ones, which have UV protection and have been designed for hot weather (they claim) for sale now. So unless you insist on wearing just sleeveless t-shirts and shorts even very sunny should be manageable. :)
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We are actually pretty dry in Colorado. The altitude pulls a lot of moisture out of the air.
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There are maybe 3 months when it’s not a perpetual sauna here, though working nights helps alleviate that.
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We have more hot weather than cold. We do have lots of a/c with reasonably priced electric.
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Hmm. I hear Amazon moves its employees around, so if you got a tech job with them, maybe they’d sponsor you through the H1B?
I know some companies with overseas branches have done that, as they move their people back and forth from project to project.
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I suppose there are about three jobs there, but you should keep an eye on the Planetary Resources career page. They’re (supposedly) building micro-satellite telescopes and will (supposedly) be needing to do a whole lot of signal sorting. I think they’re essentially a boat load of squishy leftists up there (but that could be my own prejudice speaking) but it ought to be a great place for people who think that capitalizing the heck out of space is a Very Good Thing. :)
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Planetary Resources looks like a lot of fun, especially on the capitalising space thing. Them and Scaled Composites, SpaceX and others. The next few decades are going to be AWESOME…
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I think SpaceX is in W. TX. As much a desert as the Mojave, but with a more business friendly environment.
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I know of a few companies up in Boise who *love* HB1 visas.
Of course, that’s so they can pay a pittance to employees they’ve got an immoral about of control over…
I don’t know that I’d recommend it.
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Splodge– I recommend looking into making advertisements, and getting hired by an ad firm. They won’t go under uless we are tossed back into the stone age. They also pay well, but know you will be working long hours and the like. But you knew that. :)
If you want something more industrial, you could do worse than Toyota.
Toyota is a good American employer (yes, I know the company is Japanese, but they have more plants and hire more AMERICANS than our own Big Three. Also, they pay well and treat their people well… AND their VP is an Amercan. So are most of their engineers.) The Toyota R&D facility is in Ann Arbor Michigan. The CAD designers get in by competing in Shark Tanks (basically freelance crews that pool ideas and resources)– and the perveyors of the best ideas get hired. If I recall they are always looking for new people and new ideas.
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I’ll definitely give Toyota a look. As for advertisements, I’ll look, but I’m not sure if any of my skills are transferrable. Of course I’m always open to learning new things (specialisation is for insects)…
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Toyota is doing a phased move over 3 years from CA to TX.
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Manufacturing or Architectural focus in your CADD? Sounds like manufacturing, but I’m curious.
There are several trends in 3D modeling coming into their own on the architectural side and the need for skilled techs is growing. The petroleum industry is embarking on some projects so the need for process piping drafters is going up. And manufacturing of all sorts, of course.
Stepping out of school with a fresh degree, scanning the international markets may be the way to go. Plenty of American companies with international presence hiring, and a foot in the door working on the natural gas project in New Guinea might very well be the key to settling down in Texas. (Because, of course everyone wants to come to Texas.) Proving yourself on a project outside the U.S. may be the only realistic way to convince a company to sponsor you.
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Manufacturing, so far. My degree is actually Computer Aided Product Design – 2/3rds of the course is CAD based.
I’d be quite happy to work in architectural CAD – though the only relevant program I have any experience with is SketchUp.
I trained mainly using PTC CREO, though I can use Inventor, Solidworks or whatever else. After CREO’s pig’s-ear of an interface, most other programs are pretty easy. The university also has Alias, purely because it was cheaper to buy the entire package than to just buy AutoCAD. <.< I'll be spending some of the dead time between my last exam and graduation seeing if I can get my head around that.
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As you’re still a student, check the Autodesk website and see if their student downloads are available in your part of the world. If so — download ’em all! 3 year educational license from the date of download, free. Can’t use ’em commercially, and the output will be watermarked, of course, but there to be fiddled with and learned. If you’ve used Inventor you’re familiar with the interface and program philosophy. Incremental from there.
For architectural and related fields the rising trend is BIM, building information modeling. Autodesk’s go to is Revit, and I heard tell Dassault was working on a competitor. Folks are working around the edges and discovering what can be done with in-progress modeling and pre-visualization in a 3D enviro. It’ll either take off or crash and burn, I suppose.
If you’re in to the aerospace fields, you might see if you can pick up a class in Catia. In heavy use with the aero companies around here.
Like I said earlier, I suspect one of the likely routes to U.S. company notice is wage tourism. Assuming you’re in a position to pack a bag and go, being ready and willing to hang out in less than ideal conditions far away from the far away, and then prove your worth… It can open doors.
All of this is off the cuff, take it for what it’s worth (probably less than you paid for it :D ) and best of luck!
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I heard a guy from *mumble* say that you should keep a log, in excel or something, of what hours worked in what program, what you were modeling, and so forth. Then, when you make your CV, you can say ‘I have 150 hours Pro/E, 20 Solidworks’ or however. It also makes it easy to say what you’ve done. (“I’ve made hinges, valves, and pumps.”)
There are British and Japanese multinationals that have facilities and engineers employed in US locations. Toyota and Hitachi for one, can only remember BP off the top of my head for the other. *Checks notes briefly* Weatherford might also be UK.
Two sectors I know use engineers are oil and aerospace.
Oil, or energy, has production companies, and oil field service companies like Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, and Halliburton.
Aerospace/defense has companies like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grummon.
I dunno how the HR types will like your degree. I really know very little how they count types of degree programs that aren’t ABET.
Oil is supposed to be having a boom in certain areas now. Really big in one of the Dakotas, and supposed to be coming up big in certain other areas.
There are a lot of oil companies. I’ve heard that there are many headquartered out of Houston, who contract their manufacturing out to Tulsa. (Texas and Oklahoma may be on the list of probably going to have some Dakota style boom activity. That said, they both have good energy schools, and so the demand for people might not be so urgent as in the above.)
I’d say, if you have a private machine that runs Inventor, and want to get into oil, do some models of pumps, valves, and fittings. If you can’t find a position right away, maybe find some drawings from books or the internet, or take measurements from equipment in real life.
Sorry if I’m a bit stupid, I’m tired silly.
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I’ll second that hours log recommendation, fantastic advice.
Also, Autodesk has a dedicated piping 3D program: AutoCad Plant 3D. Worth poking around if you might be interested in petrochemical work. Or any process piping, really. Breweries, for instance. Who’s not interested in beer?
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I suppose it would be obtuse to note that the American Empire has been in decline since we gave Cuba and the Philippines back to the locals.
These counter-examples to the America-is-not-an-Empire claim, are illustrative of our national character. We really aren’t imperialists and the evidence cited to the contrary is weak.
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We didn’t really “have” Cuba like we did the Philippines. We went into Cuba supporting the insurgents, and left as soon as something vaguely resembling a responsible government went into place. As to the Philippines, while I’m not really happy with our attitude and actions there during the early years of the 20th century, our NOT taking those islands might have been worse for the Philippinos – they might have been taken by the Germans, Japanese, or worse yet, the French, instead.
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Note, however, that the P.I. and Cuba were inherited imperial acquisitions, and as anyone who inherits assorted odd acquisitions of some distant relative’s life knows in common, the U.S. as the inheritor really didn’t know what the heck to do with them. The meandering, definitely too slow path the U.S. followed to finally get to P.I. independence is the perfect proof of that, since the question under debate for almost all of the period between the end of the Spanish-American War and the beginning of WWII was how to leave. If it hadn’t been for the nasty guerrilla war pursued by the Moro at the turn of the century, I’d argue the U.S. would have kicked the Philippines loose before the first world war.
As others have pointed out, the resource exploitation, trade barriers, and installation of hereditary ruling class typical of colonies was absent as well.
One could complain about the revolt of the foreign merchants that led to the U.S. acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands as well, but show me the invasion fleet and army of occupation – and a couple random ships cres doesn’t count.
The smiling Dragon over in the corner has pointed out Col. Kratman’s Caliphate as an illustration of what a real American Imperialism could look like. As I’ve said here before, people around the world who complain about American Imperialism in the form of fast food and Hollywood exports really, really wouldn’t like the real thing, and there’s really not much keeping us from flipping right the heck out and doing just that other than the good nature of the American people.
Were that good nature to be sufficiently put upon, they might find themselves spending the rest of their days pining for the good times gone past when all they had to complain about were Big Macs and Transformers movies.
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While some are apparently as uncomfortable with us as they would be in a phone booth with a knife wielding psychopath, they really wouldn’t like it if we developed a taste for blood.
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Are you baking? We have not begun to rise, reminds me of baking. I’m thinking in food metaphors because I’ve not eaten much yet today. I have food, but not much desire to cook.
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An appropriate column, on International Pretend Communism Wasn’t Evil Day.
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That would be St. Joseph the Worker Says Get Your Butt Working and Get Paid for It Like Him Day.
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Ah, but the meaning has drifted, sadly.
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Actually, May Day was yet another day dedicated to Our Lady, back in the day. St. Joseph got the extra feast as a counter to Communism’s misuse of May Day.
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I use May 1 to celebrate International Victims of Communism Day.
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I refer to it as the Seattle Tear Gas Festival, myself. So glad I can work from home when I need to…
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LOL! Seriously!
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Dunnknowbout’chew, but I’m stealing that.
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Already have used it in a couple of places.
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Big holiday in my country, but that’s because this is the time when spring finally comes here (reliably, not much chance of actual snowstorms after this, just maybe little flurries at worst). The communism connection exists, and they have a few marches here and there still, but the main thing is to have fun, party and eat and drink. This used to be just a spring holiday once, is well on its way being just a spring holiday again, and all kinds of left leaning groups are occasionally seen lamenting such a sad state of affairs. :)
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That’s a great line. I’ve already stolen it; hope that’s alright.
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Heh. I asked my students “What international holiday is the US not celebrating today?” A few got it right.
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However, I still agree with Dave – and I do know history – Americans are horrible imperialists, all they want to do is go home.
I’m afraid this is totally and absolutely false. The USA is a financial and military empire. It enforces its own will and overrides national sovereignty whenever it likes in its perceived financial interests. It also maintains the military occupation of 130 different countries around the world and a global spy network.
EMPIRE is defined as “supreme power in governing; imperial power; sovereignty”. It doesn’t require colonies or governors or somebody called The Emperor. The USA openly claims sovereignty over the entire globe in much the same way Islam does.
We have not yet begun to rise. Our greatest days lie in the future.
I think that is highly unlikely. The USA is not only a financial empire, but it is now an ethnically divided financial empire that is heavily in debt. When the financial collapse takes place, the illusion of nationhood will dissipate as well. There is no such thing as a “propositional nation”; a moment’s reflection should suffice to demonstrate that the concept is intrinsically incoherent.
I suspect we’ll get history’s verdict on this in time for one of us to be able to concede to the other. I will freely admit that I was wrong if the USA rises to new heights of freedom and power. In fact, I will probably return to it.
Will you concede the point if the dollar collapses and the political union breaks apart amidst civil war?
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America is a hyperpower, but without territorial expansion and drawing its strength from subjugated groups it’s misleading to think of it as an empire. France was a hyperpower for a long time, and in my experience serious people referring to that period don’t generally seem to use the empire concept: it’s generally understood that France’s strength was more the strength of a very big nation state, not an extractive center that controlled other nations. Athens was a sort of hyperpower too. That doesn’t make them nice, at all, and it doesn’t mean they didn’t use their strength to variously bully or dominate other nations; but it does make it misleading to try to understand them as analogous with empires like Persia or Rome or Tsarist Russia which became strong that way.
Better transportation and radically better communications changed things very deeply, and effective modern nation states really don’t map to the old concepts very well. That didn’t stop people from consciously trying to make empires, but even the English, with far more success than anyone else, performed as though their multiethnic vast multinational of land were more an expensive hobby than a source of strength. If you fought the Romans or the Persians, it wasn’t necessarily people from their ethnic cultural national core that came in and kicked your ass; when the Roman empire was blown apart, one of the subcultures they had been successfully leaning on for ass-kicking remained a major power for centuries. (And when the Romans fell, one culturally quite different wing of their empire remained a formidable power for many centuries afterwards.) The British empire had a bit of that, from Gurkhas to Irish. But in practice the main way the British managed to be strong, like the main way the US is strong, is not by calling on people and tribute from conquered but warily respectful other nations, but by stacking the historically-unprecented Industrial Revolution growth rates on top of historically-recent tech for making strong nation states, thus making something big enough that it would have been respectable as an old-style empire, but vastly more productive.
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Thanks, I think I needed to this.
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I should be clear, however, that this empire is not one that has ever been sought by the American people, but rather by the trans-Atlantic elite about whom Carroll Quigley wrote in TRAGEDY AND HOPE, which is the party responsible for the installation of the new government of Ukraine.
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But you only live abroad. I grew up there. Look, I KNOW what decadence is like. We are not in it. We are suffering growing pains.
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Decadence doesn’t need to be like Europe in your (Sarah Hoyt) lifetime to be decadence. The fiscal difficulties of the US (and most nations) are rather impressive, and even with ignoring-pension bogoaccounting the relative-to-GDP size of government budgets is historically impressive. And the drift of the formal government from the supposed roots of legitimacy (the formal roots like obeying the Constitution, and the semiformal roots like being able to credibly reward cooperative people with long-term benefits they believe in and being able to credibly claim to have a clean election, and informal roots like being perceived as capable of achieving good policy outcomes) is hard to quantify or to compare across cultures but looks like a pretty big deal to me.
That said, I think the baked-in gradual decline trends are not all that likely to have time to proceed to some inevitable conclusion. Some enormous disruptions like nuclear WW3 and AI “singularity” seem to be fairly plausible: considerably more than 1% longshots, anyway. Unforeseen tech changes could be very big as well. And milder disruptions could make a big difference too. (E.g., a change in telling international comparisons and examples. The politics of the runup to the Glorious Revolution were probably significanly affected by the repeal of the Edict of Nantes. The rise and influence of the Reagan coalition, and the serious dalliance of both Carter and Clinton with mixed-economy stuff instead of leftward-only-ho economic policies — eliminating CAB, seriously backing off on some kinds of welfare — were probably in part fallout of the increasingly conspicuous decay of classic Communist regimes abroad. What happens to US politics if a Commonwealth country gets aggressive enough about attacking freedom of speech that it plays like the repeal of the Edict of Nantes? Or if some new Ludwig Erhard somehow comes into power somewhere and achieves embarrassing economic success?)
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But you only live abroad. I grew up there. Look, I KNOW what decadence is like. We are not in it. We are suffering growing pains.
And you only live in America. I grew up there. I know the difference between what it once was and what it has become. I’m not saying Europe is any better; the EU is a monstrosity. But what I don’t think you have understood yet is that the EU is an attempt to create on a European scale what already exists in the USA.
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No it isn’t. The EU is an attempt to create an idealized monolithic bureaucrat-run state by stealth. It’s more like a greater France than anything else. And the stealth is there because the people of Europe don’t want to be part of such a state and have proven it time and again whenever some EU expansion idea is put to a popular vote.
The US may be turning into something similar but there’s absolutely no intent for the EU to turn into the US and certainly not into the US before the federal expansion of the last 80 years or so
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It’s a well known fact amongst the con folk that Sarah Hoyt is a lovely guest, but she must never ever without fail be allowed to wander free without a minder. Not for her own protection you understand, but for the sake of the glittering hoohaas who might speak trash unaware of the powerful force within earshot about to rain fact and logic down on their pointy little noggins.
Very good that Kate was there to serve. Dan didn’t go, or was otherwise occupied? I firmly believe that he is responsible for a certain evil witch still being on this earth. Not that Sarah shouldn’t have taken her out, but body disposal always puts an added strain on the con committee. That particular incident did occur in Tennessee of course where “she needed killin” is still a valid defense.
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Dan was in his own panel.
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So I’m going to disagree slightly with out esteemed hostess. America may not be an empire in the traditional occupying territory sense but it has, since WW2 been the leader of the non-communist world and economically dominated the rest of the first world and less directly the rest of the world too (this is similar to the Venetian republic in the 15th/16th/17th centuries, huge trading range, lots of influence, no colonies or armies of occupation, only the US is orders of magnitude bigger and more influential that Venice). Hegemony might be a better word, but whatever it is, it looks from the outside, or underneath, as not too dissimilar to empire.
That domination is declining because the world is seeing historically unprecedented growth in the “developing” nations and a lot of that is being driven by China, which is finally recovering from about half a millennium of misrule. In addition to the growth of their own living standards, the Chinese are actually trading in Africa (for example) and making a lot of people over there wealthier too.
Moreover, right now, the mostly coastal elites in the US are squandering many of the natural advantages that America has and misdirecting investment in ways that seem almost designed to make things worse. I believe America will revert to a better form but it won’t be quick or easy
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With regards to the Chinese…
I’m not sure that their half-millenium of mis-rule is over. There’s a *lot* of silly stuff emerging from there, and the Chinese seem to be more obsessed with the trappings than the actual substance. The result is things like the “ghost cities” that we’ve been hearing about. Also, I’m not so sure that the Africans are doing all that well when the Chinese invest. What I’ve been hearing is that the Chinese prefer to import their own workers as opposed to hiring the locals. So while there is some spillover to the local economy from the Chinese investment, it’s nowhere near what it should be.
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Dave Freer, who is a D*MN acute man told me five years ago that China is a beautiful lacquered vase. the lacquer hides the cracks. As we get news of ghost steel and the like… yeah, they have worse problems than we do.
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Like the 2 million or so men who are just now beginning to realize that they’ll never get married and have kids?
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Ghost steel, entire ghost cities. Also, remember that China is China. Which is to say it is insular, cares almost entirely about itself, and really only has regional ambitions. Historically speaking.
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“Hegemony might be a better word […]”
Yes, I think a less specific word like “hegemony” is fine. I just dislike “empire” because the word used properly does seem to cut reality at the joints, describing a historically very important pattern, and it’s a shame to use it when the US doesn’t fit that pattern.
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And the thing about hegemony is that someone is always going to be the hegemon. And unless there’s a global hegemony there will be friction (that is, wars) wherever two or more regional hegemons collide.
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Agreed the misrule of China is not completely over. But it is a lot less badly ruled than it was.
Regarding Africa I’m not thinking so much of the direct mineral extraction bits as all the surroundings. E.g. cell phone networks. And safer roads. It may be a byproduct of what they want and I’m sure it could be better, but the Chinese are building the infrastructure that Africans need to thrive
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Agreed the misrule of China is not completely over. But it is a lot less badly ruled than it was.
China is also a lot less ruled than it was, period. These facts are causally connected.
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The problem here is that China doesn’t actually need the Africans for anything. The land, yes. The minerals, yes. Masses of low-wage workers? No. They already have plenty of those, and better educated in the bargain.
If the African nations aren’t careful, they may find themselves playing the American Indian role in a 21st Century version of the Manifest Destiny game.
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Take Russians and plop them on some alien world, and what would the result be? Not Russia.
Take French and plop them on some alien world, and what would the result be? Not France.
Take Brazilians and plop them on some alien world, and what would the result be? Not Brazil.
Take Americans and plop them on some alien world, and what would the result be?
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“Take Americans and plop them on some alien world, and what would the result be?”
Regular hard working Americans, a self sufficient colony with the old folks telling the kids how much better the old country was. And I guarantee someone would hand craft a US flag out of some material, skin, bark, whatever.
Select your take entirely from our crop of precious flowers and you would quickly have a world cluttered with piles of dead posies.
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I think a lot of precious flowers would toughen up fast. And remember their grandmother’s stories, or that horrible book they had to read in middle school.
Not all of them, and if they were in a single large group where they could reinforce the meme, and take anything edible/useful the slightly more enterprising found away from them “because we all have to stick together and help each other through this emergency” it would probably turn out less well than scattered small groups.
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I think we over-intellectualize. We try to assess the position of the U.S. from historical, economic or structural comparisons. Evaluating the rise and fall of various political entities and the decisions that led the way.
And we’re suffering some matching hallmarks, and some frightening trends.
But — what happens when people, all kinds of different people, decide to disregard the ‘course of the nation?’
It’s been discussed before, being an American is not a matter of being a citizen of the U.S. necessarily. It’s a matter of ideas. If the ‘nation’ stumbles, and the government runs headlong off the cliff, what happens when the people decide that they’re still Americans and they still live in the United States and they will damn well build it back up and move on?
We are not a people defined by our leaders, by a jingoistic national identity, by some shared characteristics. We’re a people defined by an idea. An idea that puts the people above all other concerns.
So when all else is fouled up, why wouldn’t people step out of the fog and march forward as Americans?
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I think the problem is that, for too many people, the definition of what “American” means is changing. Too many people think that “Freedom from Want” is the most important freedom.
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Not that many people. Even the liberals are libertarians in their private lives here. A few, yes, but we lack the generations of dependency that really bake it in.
Okay, so academics are going to be pucked… :-P I can live with that.
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IMHO the entire US educational system is a bubble long since in dire need of bursting. Especially the bigoted and obese university system designed to shield those academics from the consequences of their arrogance and stupidity.
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Yes.
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“A few, yes, but we lack the generations of dependency that really bake it in.”
I wish I was as sure about that.
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NO. Be. Compare to Europe.
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Eh. That is like saying South Texas is cold, because you compared it to Death Valley.
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Yes, but even in Europe, there’s still some stirrings of independence. here… well… Americans still roll up their sleeves. Some areas… well. BUT
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Watch what happens during major catastrophes. Joplin, MO got more or less leveled by a tornado a few years ago, and people dusted off, buckled down and got to work. And man hours and donations poured in from across the nation.
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Joplin Missouri was also, I believe, home to the nations largest flea market and livestock auction. Which gives one an idea of what type of people lived there.
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Never spent a winter or two in the Mojave, have ye?
Allow me to proffer a mid-January invitation to a camping trip. I’ll stay up here on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, thankyouverymuch. I don’t know why, but the most miserable I’ve ever been (and that’s including an overnight survival stay on Mt. Rainier at about the 4500 foot level with just the clothes on my back in early February) has been a week in the desert slightly west of Death Valley during January. It’s also the closest I’ve ever come to death by hypothermia in my life…
Death Valley is not a really good benchmark for “hot”, unless you’re talking mid-summer, in short.
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NAS China Lake?
The crazy hot lasts all summer– well, all summer day– it’s just that there’s about a two month period in there where… well, after a bit they quit replacing the thermometer on the shed until the hot weather passed. (Near the jet turning area.)
The wind probably had a lot to do with the “miserable.” I grew up (partly) in the high desert, so the wind just felt like home.
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Glorious Fort Irwin, fabled in song and story. I did a gig as an Observer/Controller at the National Training Center for a couple of years, and I’m here to tell you that, outside of a couple of weeks during the fall and spring, the Mojave could substitute for Hell or Hel with equal versimilitude.
And, yes, the wind is what does it during the winter. If you’re an O/C, the heater in your open-topped, no-doored vehicle is a lifeline, and God help you if something happens to the cobbled-together extensions you have on it. One usually bought four-inch flexible heater hose, and had that hooked up between your heater and your person, running it up under your Gore-Tex.
If that somehow failed you? Oh, dear God… There’s nothing like trying to keep up with a movement-to-contact across country, trailing armored vehicles in a wheeled death trap at forty miles an hour, in the dark before dawn, with a nice, high headwind and the temperature down to around, oh, a brisk 10 to 20 degrees. I did the wind chill chart on a morning when my heater died, and realized that the combined wind, speed of travel, and temperature was an effective 120 degrees below zero. Well, that’s what my hypothermic mind worked out from the charts, anyway…
I had words, I did, with the maintenance jackasses who’d sworn the heater was fixed when I picked the vehicle up.
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Portuguese merrily ignore the laws, but are convinced there should be MORE laws… for other people.
THAT More than anything else is what differentiates the Anglosphere from the rest of the world. Not the wanting more laws for other people bit, but the fact that we don’t, generally, blatantly disobey the laws we have and in fact dilligently enforce them even when we disagree with them.
The fact that the US federal government seems to be declaring itself and many of its employees to be above the law is a huge problem and one that is most likely to lastingly damage the US than any other individual act because it reduces (or eliminates) trust in the rule of law.
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The solution to the government’s apparent decision to declare war on the people is to remember the Founding Ideas.
Which is a critical part to solving most of our other problems, too.
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Here’s a book to raise you spirits:
George Gilder was the architect of supply side thinking and he gets things mostly right.
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I listened to some of Gilder’s speeches in the late 1990s and read his articles from that period. He may have changed but at that point he had no clue about key components of the Internet and related technologies. That led him to miss a number of critical trends and pronounce, with massive self-confidence, on things he didn’t even know he had misunderstood, as a result he was mindbogglingly wrong. I have no confidence that he is any better today.
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I’m not sold here. I don’t think it’s time to declare the American experiment dead, but it’s damn sure on life support. And the power has been cut. And the generator is almost out of fuel. Granted, there’s a guy down the street with a truck bed full of fuel. He might be in time to save the patient, but out front of the hospital there is a mass of leftists protesting the experiment’s existence and they don’t think that the patient should be allowed to live because he said something they didn’t like and now they’re offended by his micro-aggression.
Something happened this week that bothers me and it has to do with NBA owner Donald Sterling. Not just his comments, although he is a complete and utter @$$hole, but the way things went down. Mr Sterling is being persecuted for something he said in his home and probably without knowledge that he was being recorded, but it’s not even THAT. No, the problem I have is that this incident proves something I’ve suspected all along: What a person says and whether or not they agree with the existing groupthink matters more than what they’ve done. Verbalisms count for more than actions. We have crossed over the line into a totalitarian mindset. The only way to prevent a slide into actual totalitarian mindset may actually be through fire and blood.
I’m not defending Sterling. The man is a racist POS who denied housing to blacks and Latinos because of their skin color. I have a legitimate problem with that. The bottom line is that he faced no retribution from the league when this all came out. He continued on owning his team, coming to games, etc. It was all good. It wasn’t until he opened his mouth that he faced censure. I’m not saying that words don’t hurt, but it hurts a hell of a lot worse to not have a home than it does to have someone say something mean about you. What he did was worse that what he said. Which got punished?
This scares me. Dictatorships are built this way. When people are afraid to speak their mind, oppression follows. As evidenced here, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/04/29/what-is-least-free-place-in-america-it-often-college-campus/
even college campuses have become places where free speech and tolerance are openly derided. Conservatives are no longer allowed to speak their mind. This hasn’t reached the level of the law YET. Current university regulations about “hate speech” and social pressures about “micro-aggression” become paramount, when a sorority at Darthmouth College can’t have a fiesta with Mexican food because one student is offended you’re doing it wrong. Here we go with Godwin’s Law, but there is a reason that Hitler banned Jews from teaching at universities as one of his first moves to isolate them. It’s time to realize where this is headed and do whatever we need to to stop it.
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This– what I think as well. Words were punished and not actions. What the heck? Freedom of speech? You ask some of the professors and they feel that it is only a PRESS issue. And one of the biggest insults for the Bundy ranch fiasco… was the fenced free speech areas — so we can only have free speech in a fenced area?
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That words were punished while actions ignored is how you know it’s marketing, not principle. As callous as it is, I take it as a positive that they’re following the money and not the thought police.
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My thought was– who did he not pay?
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I wonder if it is a version of the badger game. Mistress doesn’t get what she wants, goads him, records him. The Usual PC people wade in, force him to sell for a fraction of what the team is worth, and someone (I’ve seen Oprah, Magic Johnson, a few others suggested) buys the franchise for a song. *shrug*
So a person can have his property taken for comments made in private and illegally recorded. And then the VileProgs will wonder “why u mad?” when the vicious backlash hits
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Of course it is the badger game– no if about it.
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Of course it is a badger game! To my mind, the only big question is who set it up from the beginning, hoping to profit. I am wondering (and rather hoping) that the mark riposts with a lawsuit of his own … the discovery phase should be absolutely amazing.
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Exactly– I am curious who will benefit.
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We’ve been through worse. We came out at the other end…
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I hope– and continue to write anyway.
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If the Civil War were fought today* it would result in 7 million dead. At the hands of their countrymen. I have yet to see a plausible scenario that comes even close to that kind of trauma (short of a total nuclear exchange, but even that will leave hundreds of small towns throughout the heartland intact. What do you think they’ll rebuild? Especially after our enemy has been so kind as to turn almost all of the vileprogs in this country into radioactive ash). We recovered 150 years ago, we can recover from anything the future holds.
*Actually, if the Civil War were fought today it would be much shorter, since everyone between the Coastal Range and the Piedmont would implement their own March to the Sea. I figure six weeks, tops.
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Perhaps it’s time someone pointed out to the leftards what the natural outcome is sure to be should we all agree that it is now open season on @$$holes.
I have my own persona shopping list right here. Won’t share it as that might spook the little darlins and make them harder to hit.
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The really interesting thing about Mr. Sterling’s situation is this: Up until this week, he was a favorite of the NAACP, set to receive some sort of “important” award from them.
Run that by me, again? This guy is a slumlord. He’s been prosecuted and sued for failure to properly maintain his property. His racism hasn’t exactly been an unknown facet of his personality, either.
And, yet… The NAACP was… Giving. Him. An. Award.
Think about that, for a second. Hell, take five minutes.
Now, tell me, why is it that I, a man who presents as a member of the so-called “white oppressor class”, and has lived a life free from actually, y’know, committing acts of racism, and who hasn’t talked racist trash about my fellow black Americans behind closed doors… Why is it that I’m the one automatically suspected as a racist, when it comes to racial matters?
The NAACP was giving Donald Sterling an award. I can’t come up with anything more sublimely surreal about this situation than that.
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Slip them enough money and they’ll give you a reward, too.
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I think they call what Sterling did “buying an indulgence” or “paying a jizya,” at least in a less secular world…
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I think the contemporary term of art for the practice is “paying protection.”
Unfortunately for Sterling, there are some things from which they cannot protect you.
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Or Sterling found out that the NAACP is not an honest thief, they don’t stay bought.
I find it interesting that everyone thinks it is perfectly fine for the NBA to ban him from access to his property (he owns the team) for making statements, in the privacy of his own home no less, that are perfectly legal to make.
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He might own the team, but the team is basically a franchise of the NBA. The other owners certainly have an interest in distancing themselves from Sterling’s wildly unpopular position. I’m sure the contract he has contains some kind of morality or arbitration clause.
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As a Brit, although American values are not my values and never will (I’m far too enamoured of bootlicking to the aristocracy and waving the flag for the queen) I do envy that you have the basic blueprint of the nation written down like that where anyone can read it. We don’t, and I think that it’s responsible for our current malaise. You always know where the soul of your country lies and I think that’s amazing.
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I’m a reformed monarchist ;)
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I’m a Canadian monarchist. The principle of Canadian monarchism can be found in the prayer for the Tsar in Fiddler on the Roof: ‘May God bless and keep the Tsar – far away from us!’
It’s handy, sometimes, having an absentee head of state. It puts a hard cap on the amount of self-aggrandizing, photo-opping pomp and ceremony that a politician can do. If a Canadian Prime Minister went around with motorcades and entourages and red carpets and a virtual Praetorian Guard of Secret Service men, the way some U.S. Presidents have been doing, he would be laughed out of office in short order.
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“If a Canadian Prime Minister went around with motorcades and entourages and red carpets and a virtual Praetorian Guard of Secret Service men, the way some U.S. Presidents have been doing, he would be laughed out of office in short order.”
Yes, but that’s because he’s Canadian.
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No, that’s because wer’re Canadians, and we laugh at people like that. Which is also why we let some old lady in England do our head-of-stating for us. Wearing silly hats is not our core competence; we outsource it.
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The obvious bit makes it possible for us to miss the subtler bit. That we made that.
Insanity can be hard to diagnose across cultural boundaries.
Those that made the constitution were acting sanely, even if taking a risk, by their culture. They may have been barking mad in every other culture.
As long as the people see that decision as sane, and can make the same decision again and again, they will be Americans.
Neglect my fixations, neglect Sarah’s, neglect Amanda’s. The madness we share, that hard to nail down quality is what makes the culture and makes the nation.
Can there ever be an England whose greatest warriors and soldiers cannot shut up about what badasses they are?
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I’ll admit – I’ve been feeling rather… down… about the future. Statism – self-defeating, cannibalistic statism – everywhere I seem to look. People willing to put the chains on themselves – their bodies, their wallets, and their minds – and clamoring to put them on the rest of us, too.
Thanks for the pep talk. Kinda needed it right now.
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Sorta on topic: Can anyone recommend a good book or articles about the US and Latin America that are NOT leftist “eeeevil US Yankee Imperialists beating up on duly elected Socialists”? I hit a rough patch in the US history textbook and I don’t have a good enough grasp on US Latin American policy in the 20th century to fully explain things. I was having to pull stuff from my memory banks (which are pretty low) and Latin America is not my field by a long-shot. You can shoot me an e-mail at AlmaTCBoykin at AOL dot com. Many thanks.
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As best I recall, I don’t think the US had a grasp on their Latin American policy.
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Our Latin American policy basically boiled down to “Keep the bloody Europeans out.” That occasionally meant that we went in and collected debts to prevent whatever European power that was dumb enough to loan money to that dysfunctional region from invading and, possibly, staying.
Post WWII, substitute “Soviets” for “Europeans”
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Try asking the Diplomad over at thediplomad dot blogspot dot com
He worked at state in that area, and seems a fairly staunch anti communist.
He also has some good articles and write ups.
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Thanks. I’ll drop him a line.
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Because we hit the wall, responding from above:
I’ve got zero respect for this sort of interlocuter. Instead of discussion or even argument, they simply shut down their thinking processes, and resort to parroting the blatherings they absorbed in whatever joke they thought they received as an education, never managing to stretch past the limits of their indoctrination. Just how the blue hell you can term expansion into a vacuum as being “imperialism”, we’ve yet to hear. And, likely, won’t.
Similarly, I venture to predict that Mr. Baird will shortly inform us that the Nazis weren’t socialist, not of the left, and instead were the whole creation of the nasty, evil conservatives. This will be based on “feelings”, and so forth, and we will be treated to arguments like “It’s obvious…”, and “It’s commonly accepted…”, while never addressing any of the objections made by anyone daring enough to offer a refutation of that rather absurd idea.
I’ll take the opposite side and guess that the problem is over-acceptance of what he’s told, but an over identification with his subject matter.
Kind of like the folks I linked a few weeks back who look at the corpses of children that came from the field where sacrificial offerings were buried, who were burnt in the same manner as the animals, who were put in the jars with the same labels as the animals, and in some cases were in the same jars as sacrificial animals, yet there is a sizable group who insist that they couldn’t possibly have been sacrificing babies.
Searching for the name indicates he may be an archaeologist specializing in some Indian groups.
(given that my mom heard one of those arguing with a lady who grew up watching the stuff in her tribe about what things were like, that doesn’t mean much for authority to appeal to)
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The problem with a lot of these people is that they’re really just not that intelligent. Intelligence, in my family and experience, means that you are continually acquiring new knowledge and experience throughout your entire life. An intelligent person is not still quoting the received wisdom from the doctrinaire instructor they had in college twenty years later, repeating what they were told then with a sublime and perfect earnestness, never having questioned or thought through anything they were told for themselves.
There is indeed such a phenomenon as being educated past your intelligence. I’d have to class the majority of the soi-disant intelligentsia in this country as being in that group. Most of them are still regurgitating the mental pap they were spoon-fed during their educations, and lack the mental horsepower to even begin to question what they were taught. Hell, most of them are so simple that they can’t even identify the fact that they were indoctrinated instead of educated…
Anti-intellectualism in American culture? Frankly, I think it’s the only damn thing that will save us. The majority of the jackass idiots I’ve had to deal with that have had the temerity to describe themselves as intellectuals are too stupid to pour piss out of a boot. Instead, they lap it up like fine champagne, insisting that the rest of us join them in the endeavor.
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Two hundred + comments and I cannot believe that a search for “decline is” got no hits. While I lack time to read all comments here today, I must take time to make one.
On reading this essay a phrase came to my mind, a phrase so concise, of such clarity that I knew it wasn’t original to me. So I [SearchEngined] and offer now the results of that four-word, five-syllable phrase. A few additional thoughts will follow in other comments:
Decline Is a Choice
The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy.
OCT 19, 2009, VOL. 15, NO. 05 • BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
The weathervanes of conventional wisdom are engaged in another round of angst about America in decline. New theories, old slogans: Imperial overstretch. The Asian awakening. The post-American world. Inexorable forces beyond our control bringing the inevitable humbling of the world hegemon.
On the other side of this debate are a few–notably Josef Joffe in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs–who resist the current fashion and insist that America remains the indispensable power. They note that declinist predictions are cyclical, that the rise of China (and perhaps India) are just the current version of the Japan panic of the late 1980s or of the earlier pessimism best captured by Jean-François Revel’s How Democracies Perish.
The anti-declinists point out, for example, that the fear of China is overblown. It’s based on the implausible assumption of indefinite, uninterrupted growth; ignores accumulating externalities like pollution (which can be ignored when growth starts from a very low baseline, but ends up making growth increasingly, chokingly difficult); and overlooks the unavoidable consequences of the one-child policy, which guarantees that China will get old before it gets rich.
And just as the rise of China is a straight-line projection of current economic trends, American decline is a straight-line projection of the fearful, pessimistic mood of a country war-weary and in the grip of a severe recession.
Among these crosscurrents, my thesis is simple: The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline–or continued ascendancy–is in our hands.
Not that decline is always a choice. Britain’s decline after World War II was foretold, as indeed was that of Europe, which had been the dominant global force of the preceding centuries. The civilizational suicide that was the two world wars, and the consequent physical and psychological exhaustion, made continued dominance impossible and decline inevitable.
The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We–whom Lincoln once called God’s “almost chosen people”–did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world’s co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon–and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.
Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States–controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture–has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.
The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. …
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Alternate form, aka “revised & expanded” version:
The 2009 Wriston Lecture
Decline Is a Choice
Dr. Charles Krauthammer, Syndicated Columnist
In 1987 the Manhattan Institute initiated a lecture series in honor of Walter B. Wriston, banker, author, government advisor, and member of the Manhattan Institute’s Board of Trustees. The Wriston Lecture has since been presented annually in New York City with honorees drawn from the worlds of government, the academy, religion, business, and the arts. In establishing the Lecture, the Trustees of the Manhattan Institute—who serve as the selection committee—have sought to inform and enrich intellectual debate surrounding the great public issues of our day, and to recognize individuals whose ideas or accomplishments have left a mark on their world.
THIS EVENT IS ALSO AVAILABLE IN [ MP3 ] and [ MP4 ] FORMATS
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My personal response: They tried to peddle this crap in the 1980’s, proclaiming Japan’s ascendancy (BTW – how’s that worked out?)
The sold it to the natiion in the 1970s and all we got was James Earl Carter.
I am confident they were hawking this nostrum back in the 1920s, the 1890s, 1860s, 1820s and 1790s — at least.
It hasn’t been true and won’t be true except that they sell a significant majority of the nation on the great Satanic Lie that resistance is futile. (“I’m irresistible you fool, you’re no exception to the rule, give in, give in …”) The Romans declined because they abandoned the principles that had made them Romans — once that decline was inevitable. But they did not have to do that, they could have stayed true to the virtues which built their empire.
American decline is similarly a choice. We can continue to value Liberty above safety, personal responsibility above social justice, continence above incontinence. Our Viking ancestors knew that death is inevitable but decline a choice. I decline to decline.
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Going alone with “decline is unstoppable” is “wave of the future”. How many “waves of the future” have failed to become the future?
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I’m still waiting on my flying car. Does that count?
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I’m waiting on my son to draw me a flying car so I can do a T-shirt, “Dude, Where’s My Flying Car?”
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“We built it. Some yay-hoo ran it into the building. We’re re-working the design. Give us a call in — say 50 years?”
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I want one.
I ask that question regularly.
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http://www.flyskyrunner.com/
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OK, that looks awesome!
Not sure it counts though, but it still looks awesome!
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I live in LA. I would not want a flying car in the hands of LA drivers. Note:
San Jose Driver would be even more unthinkable.
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I live in Georgia. I doubt I’d have to worry about LA drivers.
Then again, from what I’ve seen of LA traffic, they might decide Georgia is a short cut.
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There is no unavoidable decline for the US. It is due to the current administration, who seem determined to bring it about.
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I can’t believe nobody responded appropriately….
Alright now stop– KRAUTHAMMER TIME!
(Totally stole that from the Boze show, but… it should be his theme song!)
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BTW: the suitable response to such claims as that which triggered your outburst is “She asserts facts not in evidence!”
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uh. You are correct.
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Sarah, I hate to burst your bubble, but she really did. Being from New Jersey/Southern NY, *is* a speed impediment. :-)
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Classic Sarah. I like virtually all the topics you write about, but this is why I always stick around.
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No. we aren’t an Empire. Yet. If we are very, very lucky, we won’t be in the lifetimes of anyone here. What worries me is that I do see a path to Empire, and it won’t be a good one.
The assorted Islamo-idiots attacking us cannot destroy us. The best shot they had killed less than 5,000 people. And the gods protect them if they do better. Because what they CAN do is make us really, seriously angry.
Say that they get their hands on a really massive bomb. Not nuclear; something like a fuel-air bomb. They smuggle it into a city where they can get away with that sort of thing. Detroit springs to mind. They set it off, and kill between 20,000 and 100,000 people.
After 9/11 several people of the Liberal Intellectual Left assured me that we were “lashing out in unreasoning anger”. I told them that that was hogwash, and I could prove it. A few of them were incautious enough to challenge me. My proof? Mecca does not glow in the dark. If Islamic Terrorists oil a city, we WILL lash out in unreasoning anger. And nobody will be in a position to stop us.
It won’t matter who is in the White House; he’ll have to declare war (unless he wants to be impeached). Anti-war activists will be slung into the clink so hard they bounce, and demands to see their lawyers will be answered with the truthful statement “Where’s the difficulty in that? He’s in the cell next to you.”
We will roar out of North America bent on scorching Islam from the face of the earth, and by the time we cool down we will control most of the Middle East (A fate I wouldn’t wish on a rabid dog). We will be an Empire, and we won’t have undergone the social changes necessary to be good at it.
I’m a white male, and over 50. I’ll actually be pretty comfortable for a while, and the downside won’t start setting in (for WASP males like me, anyway) until after I’ve passed. Otherwise the only consolation I have is that the twits who hampered Bush’s efforts to convince the Middle East that diplomacy was preferable to pissing us off will get to contemplate actual fascism from inside actual concentration camps. The kind Bush wouldn’t have set up if the terrorists had killed his mother.
The Empire you contemplate would be a lot better. Let’s hope I’m a lousy oracle.
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I had a similar experience after 9/11. Some Eurotard remarked that the US had declared war on Islam. I pointed out that if the US had declared war on Islam, the Stars and Stripes would be flying over Mecca.
I’m not sure killing 100,000 Americans (which would take quite a bit more than a thermobaric bomb. A small nuke in NYC might do it) would be enough to prompt us into empire. We would absolutely paste anyone involved, and nations would set land-speed records getting out from between us and whoever knew someone who knew a dog that belonged to someone who knew something, but at the end of the day I think we’d find some not-repugnant local to put in charge and go home. Probably with the message “Do NOT make me come over there again.”
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I think we’d have to do what we did in Japan – occupy for a relatively short time, and maintain a pretty strong military presence for a much longer time afterward. I thought it was insane that we didn’t set up a permanent military base in Iraq.
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That’s Obama’s foreign policy in a nutshell. “What is the stupidest possible course of action? Yeah, we’ll do that.”
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Tsk – don’t you listen to your betters? Obama has bragged that he’s operating a “small balls” foreign policy and leading with his behind.
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It’s not so much the small balls and leading with behinds that bother me. It’s when he puts our pants around our ankles.
And now that I’ve totally violated the community’s sense of decency, I’m going to go to bed.
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Okay. This community has a SENSE OF DECENCY? And no one told me? Man, I have to figure out how to be better informed.
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Well, not any more. It’s been violated.
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 11:17 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> accordingtohoyt commented: “Okay. This community has a SENSE OF > DECENCY? And no one told me? Man, I have to figure out how to be better > informed.” >
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So does that mean a sense of decency is like virginity? Once it’s been violated, it’s gone? (Runs)
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See. You leave for a few days and the inmates start making stuff up.
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I think it may be behind the couch somewhere.
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The question is, what is it doing behind the couch, and who is it doing it with.
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I don’t think that plan would have worked there. The Japanese became eager to learn from us and become an international economic force. There, I expect it would have taken a 40-year occupation and provisional government, while we educated the propaganda out of them.
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While I don’t think it would have worked there either (at least not the same way it did Japan and not without at least two large cities nuked) I entirely agree that not leaving a permanent military base in Iraq was insane.
Well actually if you take the view that Obama is batting for the other team, it wasn’t that bad a move to get America’s pants tangled around our ankles so we faceplanted that badly.
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“I expect it would have taken a 40-year occupation and provisional government, while we educated the propaganda out of them.”
Yeah, guess I have to agree with you on that – what would it take to knock out the voices of the extremist imams?
(I actually have a semi-silly theory that a lot of the middle-eastern problems are because of polygamy, in that there’s not enough women to go around when the richer males are taking up to 4 legal wives, and often many other lesser consorts in the case of the wealthiest families. You’ve gotta do something with the extra unattached males. The polygamist cults in America just kick the teen boys out of the complex. The middle east has been siccing theirs on the rest of the world for centuries – no wonder the reward if you die is 72 virgins.)
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I don’t know how much that influences things – human behaviour has a mind-boggling (heh) number of variables – but it certainly doesn’t make things any better.
I’m curious how many stable societies have/had a majority practicing polygamy. I know here in Utah it was never a large number – with marriage being essential to their religion and culture, and their being capable of basic math, it could never be any other way – and I seem to recall that there are non-Muslim groups in Africa and on the subcontinent who seem to have a stable social structure that includes at least some polygamous practices, but in the eastern cases I don’t know whether it’s most men or only well-to-do, high-status types. Anyone have knowledge to contribute?
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In more primitive societies it was much more common, because there was a higher rate of mortality in young men than in young unmarried women. Still most polygamous societies viewed you as wealthy if you had multiple wives.
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It’s not silly. I have friends who grew up in polygamous families too and in the sort of society where it’s legal an institutionalized (not SF where it’s voluntary and often temporary) it’s a very poisonous structure. Jacob’s family life was quiet by comparison.
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Jacob vs. Esau is nothing compared to some of the stories I heard from some of the wives of Pakistani grad students – battles over inheritance, second and third wives ganging up to get better positions for their children against those of the senior wife, and that’s the educated “upper” classes. And yeah, when you combine polygamy with a very high female mortality rate, you get a whole lot of young males with no prospects for marriage. That is not a good combination for societal stability and domestic tranquility.
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Naliaka’s In Time of Peril actually uses that domestic contention in a bit of verbal sparring between the protagonist and his North African kidnapper. I remember wincing when I read it the first time.
Read, as they say, The Whole Thing.
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Funny, the Oyster Wife and I are team-teaching a children’s Sunday School class about Joseph being sold into Egypt. As we were reviewing the lesson last night, I kept noting two things: God uses some really messed up vessels sometimes and (to put a finer point on it) Israel’s sons were some real a-holes, weren’t they?
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Yep to both points.
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Admittedly, Joseph’s dreams and Israel’s giving Joseph most favorite status didn’t help matters.
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I think part of this is polygamy.
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Laurie, I have long said that we’ll have “won” in Iraq when it is an accompanied tour. In other words, I also think it is insane that we didn’t set up a permanent military base in Iraq. (Also, since my “accompanied tour” condition isn’t going to come true, I doubt that we’ve “won” anything past the short-term, if that.)
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…nations would set land-speed records getting out from between us and whoever knew someone who knew a dog that belonged to someone who knew something…
See Tsar Vladimir The Shirtless’ phone call to President Bush, I think on the evening of 9/11, assuring him that Russia would stay out of the way and help with logistics. Not be anything like an enemy, no, notneven an adversary, not at all, no siree (totally a Russian idiom).
Compare and contrast with Tsar Vlad’s communications style these days. For extra credit, posit an explanation for the differences based on current events and personalities of leaders for each period.
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Oops, runaway italicize tag..dang…I’m certain I closed it too.
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Dunno. See, I laughed at a guy who started his career by failing to publish a book called the ‘Decline and Fall of the American Empire’. But, he taught me to respect authors because the guy ended up, among other things, making fractional billions off a startup, running an appreciable fraction of one of America’s largest companies, and ending up in reasonably high political office before leaving the Republican Party to become a libertarian. And, well that’s the author who _failed_ to publish.
The guy’s smarter than me. And maybe not wrong either. He didn’t speak to some sort of military overthrow, but to a decline of America’s power and prestige – largely through the offices of a ruling class that had become disconnected from the good of the nation. The sort of ruling class stupid and predictable enough to follow Bin Laden’s playbook to the letter. (Seriously, Bush could have been a collaborator and done much the same…)
I also hope that technology may extricate us from the hole we’re digging. It might. I worry because I like the free market, but suspect that large class separations aren’t healthy for the nation. I could be wrong.
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The problem with that analysis is that American’s don’t have a ruling class. We’ve got a bunch of people we outsource the day to day running to things to, but they’re not a fixed and immutable part of society. When those hirelings start to routinely screw up, we take notice and replace them. Not all at once, though there are occasional spectacular blood-lettings, but over a significant period of time there is a complete turnover in management. We’re in the process of such a turnover now.
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Yep. And there’s no such thing as a class difference. Not compared to most human societies.
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Yet from my observations the current batch of liberals in power have a very pronounced attitude of class and privilege. Would be a hoot as they consistently prove themselves to be incompetent effups, if it were not so damaging to the rest of us to have to cover their failures.
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Maybe, but those elites we send to take care of things seem to believe that there is a class difference.
And that’s a big problem.
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Yes, it is.
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Sarah,
I copied your excellent article and posted it in an editorial (doubt my local paper will post it) and I should have asked for permission first. I just thought that what you said was so spot on..that it needed to be disseminated to my county. It’s just a spot where people can sometimes comment..and lately it’s like MTV in the late 80’s….(deliberately inflammatory). It seems to be policy to take the worst of both sides of a debate and post them ..
one after another.
I hope I didn’t piss you off Sarah. I read …buy..your books, and have always enjoyed your comments in the bar; and I took liberties in the heat of the moment….after reading some sludge from my local paper…
I assumed you wouldn’t mind having your words printed…and attributed.
I am sorry if I offended you, but I was thinking, in the heat of the moment, that you are of a like mind..and more wise than me in how you can say something.
May I ask a Mea Culpa and get permission after the fact?
leaperman
Dwan Seicheine
Here is the paper and the editorials I refer to.
http://www.uniondemocrat.com/Opinion/Letters/
Sincerely
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You can get permission after the fact, but you should attribute it?
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It’s been my observation that here once again we have people well and truly divided by a common language
(Dr. Possony had a fair amount of work on what might be called Aesopian and other language – what some today call disparagingly dog whistle – and spoke highly of some guides to usage or what the Communist usage actually means Language as a Communist Weapon rather tarred by association but I don’t know a better reference)
If, I say if, Imperialism be defined as the highest stage of Capitalism
Wikipedia – not particularly useful to worry about worker revolt given unemployment rates and the risks people will take today looking for hard work but that’s another issue. No doubt the Native Americans who found work on the high iron in NYC were exploited but I haven’t seen a lot of capital on the reservations.
I am not arguing for this or any related definition of imperialism I am saying that someone who uses this sense of imperialism (and so by definition believes the USSR could not be practicing imperialism any more than Leopold of Belgium was practicing imperialism – neither capitalist – and so it goes) will push hot buttons followed by people talking past one another. This happens with today’s poorly educated young who seem to be unable to code switch. In fact unable to recognize the sources of their usage.
I remember an Economics graduate of Patrice Lumumba – coursework in English – we had to threaten to take out back and give lumps because although he recognized the different senses of the common words he wouldn’t allow that any usage but his own learning was proper – though we all the rest of us knew what we meant in terms of Samuelson Foundations of Economic Analysis and other such. His usage for commodity excluded e.g. pet rock or first item premiums for early adapters or any of the various commodities that have only the very slightest connection to a labor theory of value.
No horse in the current race, just an observation that a lot of fly talk at Cons is indoctrinated people talking party line past the educated people – and I’m never sure which side I’m on though I go ahead and open my mouth anyway.
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Dunno. Class is measurable in terms of income, wealth, et cetera. And, by those measures, America’s class mobility is slowing down. Mind you, my wife’s home country had and to some extent still has a recognizable slave class…we aren’t there…
But we are at the point where the rule of law is disappearing for the upper classes and our own government. That is something that should be stopped. As should the tendency of certain industrial segments (finance and military) to coopt the legislative process and vote themselves more welfare than poor people have ever managed…
Regarding the ruling class, well, that guy made most of his money inheriting it from people running guns and whiskey during Prohibition…so…I am not certain that our ruling class is terribly fluid. I also listened to a fair number of lectures from other Eastern bluebloods on how Americans were ineducable, not worth educating, and polluted by lower races. It seemed a common theme.
Mind you, the guy is brilliant…just not quite good enough to make it as a writer.
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No, class is only defined as that by Marx. Class means a whole lot of other things in human societies “Who is her family? Who are her connections?” specifically, that is the rights and privileges attaining to people with the right background.
Two things, while economic mobility is NOT slowing down, even if statistics CAN be doctored to seem like it is, the second IS slowing down and “our betters” (AH!) like that.
A great part of this nonsense is the attempt to install a marxist technocracy.
They’ll fail. Because of the long march, they’re already third generation, aka, generation fail. But they don’t know it because privilege has eased their every step.
As we have proof daily.
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Right. A class system, when you come right down to it, is one in which social status is a legally inheritable trait. It can be done openly, as in countries with formal patents of nobility, or covertly, as in the modern EU, where the top jobs in the bureaucracy are available only to those who attended the ‘best’ schools, and the places in the ‘best’ schools are largely reserved for the children of top bureaucrats.
The U.S. hasn’t got anything like that, thank God, and if it tried to implement it, millions of Americans would be coming up with ways to bypass or ignore it within five minutes flat.
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“As should the tendency of certain industrial segments (finance and military) to coopt the legislative process and vote themselves more welfare than poor people have ever managed…”
Wait, back up, the military is a) an industry and b) WELFARE?
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Thirdly, MORE?
http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/where-did-your-tax-dollar-go
(And this is just federal, doesn’t count state welfare.)
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Apparently, their “more” really sucks:
http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/national-defense-spending
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And unlike Welfare (at least some of it) our military has to pay income tax on their tax revenue supported income.
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Sarah Hoyt standing on a table berating SF fans over politics would have been a GREAT youtube video. Just think of all the free publicity.
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Res, I think it’s time to play the “let’s ignore Josh A. Kruschke” card. [Wink]
Otherwise, Sarah might start “whacking” us.
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“Start”? I went to Ravencon and Sarah, despairing of finding carp large enough, hit me with a thrown T-shirt!!!!
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Hopefully a clean one. Those dirty stinking ones should be banned as weapons. [Grin]
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Clean and bagged, yes.
Now I want a shirt with the legend: Sarah Hoyt throws carp at people and all I got was …
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yes, indeed.
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This is true. On the head. :/ I’m so sorry….
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At least you hit a body part I don’t much use.
(Different joke, for members of the naval persuasion, excised on basis of taste.)
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Why is it just you guys that get all the carp attention.
I’m feeling a little neglected.
:-(
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Because Sarah doesn’t think you’re assuming?
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Could everybody argue with Josh and JDB down here? The thread up above has gotten a tad overloaded.
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Depends. Are you willing to move down their projectors so they’re able to “argue” on the same level they’ve been doing?
One thing I like about the internet, it makes it really hard for any but the most fanatical to stick behind someone when they pull the “oh, that thing I just did recently, I will accuse you of doing– and act like I’m the victim! Ahahahah!” trick.
It also makes it pretty clear who is coping their rhetorical tricks from IRL to the net.
Not sure if it’s good or bad that folks in text are more likely to stay silent than jump in when the person they thought was right pulls dumb stuff…. (Well, on average. Not here. Honest debaters will go all Cats of Kilkenny on a topic, and on another throw in because… well, it’s not personal, and even if that guy is just so wrong on THAT, he’s right on THIS!)
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You’re right RES what was I thinking try to have a conversation with the likes of the great and all powerful knowing RES. I will now slink iff to lick my woulds.
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While licking your wounds you might also study up on effective use of sarcasm. Also, learn to distinguish prepositions; rather than arguing with me you were attempting to argue at me. Which is why I wasn’t arguing at all.
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RES,
I’ve tried this.
All I got was accused of dissemble. And that’s not the standerd usage/definition of the word so it’s not my fault. You should have been more clear in your writing.
So, I give up. I can’t win for loose.
I obviously can’t write or conunicate in away that doesn’t annoy the locals, so I won’t be commenting anymore.
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You skipped the step where you admitted that you did not make yourself clear; that’s the problem.
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Tsk, Ms Catelli — if people accepted responsibility for their actions, what would become of this country? I gather they teach “That’s not my dog, he didn’t bite you and besides, you kicked him first” in pre-school these days.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions is what got Americans derided as “cowboys” back before we got sophisticated like them Euro
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No I admitted several times, that I’m no good at this communicating in the written word, that some of this is my fault. But comunication is a two way street. If the other party isn’t trying to understand the point if view of the one speeking it doesn’t matter how clear the person speeking is.
But putting all the blame on the writer, if there is a break down of communication, isn’t taking any responsibility for trying to understand what is trying to be communicated.
All I can know for any certainty is what is in my head, kind of, because we all have our own blindspots and can be self-delusional. If it is this hard to figure out what is in our own heads, how is it that I or anyone else is held responsible for not knowing what is in anyone rlses?
So, all I can do is try to be as clear as possible, and hope they will meet me in the middle, by trying to undetstand where I’m coming from. If we push all the responsibility onto the writer or speaker that is nolonger twoway comunication that talking to yourself.
Sorry, RES, if I dropped into a lecturing tone or speaking at you not with you, but I was asking question and trying to get people to engage in a twoway conversation. Thanks for the tip. I’ll try and use more incluse pronouns.
But not on this blog.
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You tried to equivocate, and when you were called on it you tried to wiggle out of it, and when that didn’t work you tried to blame the people who pointed out you were wrong, and now you’re trying to wail about being a victim.
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Josh, if you want to step out and try to come in again, I’m sure most folks would be willing to assess the second attempt fairly.
But if you’re going to keep talking about how you’re not going to talk to us anymore — it gets harder to take it seriously.
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Foxfier,
“Equivocate… wiggle out”: emotionally charged language; attach on charter. Implying that I’m a lier purposely trying to hide behind confusing language. Maybe I’m just not a good writer (no maybes about it) and when someone points something out like confusing word choice I do try to explain why I choose the word or point out that it has another definition than that I thought was obvious from context of use.
“Blame the people who pointed it out”: Boxing one’s opponent into a corner and framing the debate so there is no good way to answer: Saul Alinsky would be proud. “Nice one!” If I feel I’m unfairly being criticized, I’m in the wrong for pointing it out.
Some times people purposely twist and take things out of context. Some times it’s not the writer it’s the listener. No matter how you frame your point or what words you use the listener will always find fault with something.
Then there is legitimate differences in how people see the world or uses language. Not everyone has the same history or life experience. Not everyones brain works the same way. I feel surprised that I even feel the need to point this out to a group of self described odds. Ironic even.
Commenting on this blog is not good for me. I’m already insecure about my ability communicate in the wrtten word. Add to that people that feel it’s ok to call people idiot; not good at all.
To Eamon’s point.
Every time I try to make myself clearer it just seems to make it worse. Why do I even bother? Maybe it’s a feeling of the next time will be it, or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment? So, here I’m again.
What was Einstein’s definition of insanity again?
And it is my fault for jumping in over my head. I’m not a good writer so what should I expect on a blog full of writers.
So frustrated with myself mostly. I feel sometimes like there something broken in me. Why can’t I find the words to make myself understood. Are there words? Is it me? Is it you? Fuck I don’t know anymore.
I’m not a victim. I choose to be here, but how much time and energy should I invest in this? I’m just going back to what I was doing before. Just go back to read the posts and be introduced to some good books and authors I haven’t read before. It’s not worth the time and hassle. That’s what I feel I should be doing anyways. I feel everyone will be happier.
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I don’t think you’re an intentional liar, and very much doubt many others do here either, Foxfier included. There may be many other things people think describe you, that aren’t that complimentary. But about as close as you come to being an out and out liar is to change your position on stuff, without ever admitting your previous position was wrong; or to attempt to claim that what you previously said wasn’t really what you meant. Which I would describe as Equivocate and trying to Wiggle Out.
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Bearcat,
Sited example pleases. I don’t see it. At the very lest tell me what you think my position was originally and what it changed into.
There was several time I was miss attributed as having JDB position and maybe there in lies the confusion.
I working on a time line to see if this is true that my position shift, but I feel that it has been consistent.
And do you want to here some irony:
This all started because I agreed with this statement by suburbanbanshee:
Because my reply was to Kirks reply to this.
Funny couple days before I’m getting beat-up because of questioning her. now I’m getting beat-up for agreeing with her.
Now that’s comedic irony.
:-)
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It is true that some here enjoy a bit rough manner of play.
If you believe that every time you try to clarify your meaning things become muddier, and that this is making you question yourself and leaving you miserable, maybe you should just stop entering the pond?
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CACS,
It even worse, because I read Sarah and the Guest Bloggers Posts I go yes this how I feel. If anyone will understand me it will be this group. Then I try to interact and there’s like some filter… where everyone hears the opposite of what I intended. Like I’m in a bad Twilight Zone Episode.
Now I’m blubbering over my phone… I don’t need this shit. Fuck it.
CACS your right. The is last I’m going to say on this.
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And, again, you try to change the subject and paint yourself as a victim.
Given that this is a very common style of “debate,” it does not mean you are liar (‘willful liar’ is rather redundant) or deliberately trying to mislead, it just means that you are arguing emotionally, in a style quite familiar to anybody who’s been around the internet for more than about a week.
In short, it’s not that you’re a liar, it’s that you’re a jerk who keeps trying to blame his shortcomings on others. This group is pretty aware of those who want to hold others to higher standards than themselves.
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