Delighted
I’m delighted to see our president being standoffish to the pseudo-coup in Honduras. Not because I dislike the new president or like the old one. But because it shows America has finally left the Cold War mentality, when there always had to be someone we identified as “our bastard” who, however odious, would keep the place clean of Soviet spies and weapons. Those were real fears then. They’re not now.
Just as I was delighted when George W. Bush chose to overthrow a tyrant we had helped prop up, and let the dice of democracy roll in a place we could as easily have kept safe at a distance, with some ugly deals.
Probably I’m the only person alive who sees Bush II and Obama as a continuity. Not in all things important, but in the evolution of a Cold War America.
As for Honduras and its neighbors, probably it’s inevitable that they take a delayed plunge into all that silly neo-Marxist populist crap, just as it was inevitable for ethnic tensions to run red in Eastern Europe and Iraq when the lid was lifted on those pots at the end of the Cold War.
They’ll do what they’ve been yearning to do since 1945, and now we can let them romp down those foolish paths, like preachers’ kids suddenly out of the parental gaze.
New Face of Blog
“There I Fixed It” is a hilarious blog, especially for men like me who inherited a world full of practical problems our grandfathers never dreamed of, along with a mere smidgen of our grandfathers’ skill with a tool box.
But look how it works: People send in their pictures and text. The blogger assembles it and presents it. What do you bet there will be a book out with the best of it, in time for Christmas, and someone will make a nice tidy pile of money without doing a whole lot of real work.
Apopcalypse
Arguably THE icons of the 1970s and the 1980s, respectively, within 24 hours.
Argent
Politics. Morality. Ambition. Marriage. Legality. Power. Responsibility. Hypocrisy. Religion.
The one thing our pundits lack the language to speak of is the one thing that would have mattered, in this story, to human beings from Sophocles to Stendhal: Passionate Erotic Love.
Created Woman
AP photo caption:
“Maria Malina, scientific employee, presents the photo of a carved ivory female figurine during its presentation in Tuebingen, southern Germany, Wednesday, May 13, 2009. The figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany is allegedly the world’s oldest reproduction of a human with an estimated age of at least 35,000 years.”
-Miles Lascaux
Ain’t Gonna Study
A gulf between the military and the university is not healthy for American democracy. The constitutional order requires a civil-military relationship that protects military professionalism and autonomy, while also honoring the principle and practice of civilian control. Public awareness of national-security matters allows for a more effective partnership between the military and society. A public ignorant of the proper role of the military can lead to three major problems: uncritical support for military actions, or what Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, calls the “new American militarism”; endorsement of an opposite, antimilitary ideology that perceives the armed forces as evil or as the “other”; or a simple lack of knowledge regarding the military and strategic-security matters. National security is the cardinal duty of the state, and debate about the appropriate means of achieving security is a matter of vital importance to us all.
-Miles Lascaux
Could It Be?
A GOP youth movement that’s genuine and not a joke?
Republican leaders frantically seeking to rebrand their party might want to swing their attention from Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to a feisty young Republican who has never been elected to anything: Meghan McCain.
The 24-year-old daughter of U.S. Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, is a regular political blogger and most certainly not her mother Cindy’s serene, St. John-suit-wearing stereotype of a Republican woman.
In brash blog posts on the Daily Beast — “The GOP doesn’t understand sex” — and outpouring of posts on Twitter, she has described herself as a pro-sex, “pro-life, pro-gay-marriage Republican,” one who experts say may be at the forefront of a new GOP breed: the “Meghan McCain Republican.”
That GOP faction is younger and interested in fiscal responsibility and less government involvement in people’s lives, while supporting environmentalism and civic engagement. They’re part of the millennial generation, the largest and most diverse generation in American history, whose voters — born starting in the early 1980s — cast ballots for Barack Obama by a more than 2-to-1 ratio.
I guess my first question is, how do you tell them from centrist/moderate Democrats? But perhaps the country’s swung so far (back) to the left that that is the only viable right-side position.
-Miles Lascaux
News Flash
Prominent social conservative figure, speaking at an event for President Bush, says those who vocally oppose his administration commit “treason,” compares them to Bin Laden, calls them domestic terrorists, suggests they be tortured, and hopes for their deaths.
The thing is, I suppose, to some people, that is the height of comedy.
-Miles Lascaux
Ambiance 