All posts by Mike

'Culture'

Two Comedies

Probably the most over-rated movie last year, in my opinion, was Borat. While the movie had its moments, I simply do not understand the phenomenon, the tendency of people to proclaim it the best comedy ever. It just wasn’t that funny. Not to me, anyway. It was Jackass for pseudo-intellectuals.

And I’m sorry, I have to agree with Hitchens. What struck me on watching the movie was not how racist and intolerant Americans are, but how polite they were to someone who was himself bigoted and obnoxious. In the famous rodeo scene, they become uncomfortable as his boasts become nastier; the obnoxious frat boys drive him across the country, give him free beer and try to talk him out of his Pamela obssession; the Southern hosts put up with his appalling behaviour with more grace than any liberal would. Borat has allowed a lot of obnoxious, self-important writers to sneer at the rest of America. But I think it’s much more illustrative of their own arrogance.

By contrast, I just recently watched Idiocracy, the latest Mike Judge movie to be abandoned by the studio. The movie is no Office Space, but it’s at watchable and at least as good as Borat. Somehow, 20th Century Fox found a way to inflict Garfield II, Deck the Halls, Fantastic Four, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, and Big Momma’s House II on the innocent unsuspecting public while this movie remained on the shelves.

I’m not sure I buy the underlying hypothesis of Idiocracy, for reasons that are too involved to go into now. But as a vicious nasty satire of our anti-intellectual culture and corporate America, the movie is deadly accurate.

I actually have the opposite take of Judge on the Culture of Idiocy. I think the popularity of shows like Jerry Springer and Jackass (and Borat) is more reflective of the increasing intelligence and education of Americans, rather than the opposite. It allows people to look down on their inferiors, a process which used to involve just looking out the window.

On the other hand, the bizarre and frustrating popularity of this guy makes me wonder if Idiocracy is a too optimistic.

Politics, War on Terror

Bolton Goes Batshit

John Bolton was a lot easier to like when he kept his mouth shut. Since his terrible performance on The Daily Show, he’s now calling on us to invade Iran.

Look, I don’t like the idea of a nuclear Iran any more than he does. But we’re going to have to accept it. We don’t have the ability to invade. We’ve got our hands full with Iraq, a much smaller nation with no allies and no money and three different ethnic groups. Can you imagine invading a country several times its size with money, weapons, motivation and a single proud culture? Remember that invasion of Japan we managed to avoid in 1945? Iran would make it look like a picnic.

No, what we do with Iran what we did with the Soviet Union: we create a balance of terror. We give Patriot missiles to Israel, park nuclear missile subs in the Indian Ocean and make it very clear to the Iranians that if they ever launch a weapon, Tehran will cease to exist. We explain that with mass spectroscopy, we can trace a terrorist weapon to its source. And if we find they’ve given one to a terrorist, Tehran will cease to exist. This is what we did with the Soviet Union. This is what we do now. And it will work because even if John Bolton has sufficiently terrified himself, we will still have a thousand times as many nuclear weapons as Iran.

“But Mike”, you say, “they’re crazy! They think Allah will protect them!”. Really? Are they crazier than Joe Stalin or Nikita Kruschev, both of whom murdered millions? Is this insight into their nature based on anything real or just the hysterical supposition of the Right? Is it the same insight that told us the Iraqis would great us with flowers in Nasiriyah?

I actually don’t think Ahmajinedab is a religious fanatic. I think he, like most of the Islamists, is using religious rhetoric to advance a quite earthly political agenda.

There’s something else: the biggest gaffes in foreign policy come about from misreading the enemy, from seeing them the way we want to see them rather than the way they are. It’s 1861, when the South thinks they will whip the North in months. It’s 1939, when Chamberlain thought Hitler just wanted to reunite the German people. It’s 1968, when we thought that Vietnam wanted to become a puppet state of their thousand-year old enemy (watch Fog of War sometime).

It’s 2003, when we think Saddam is refusing to accomodate weapons inspectors because he has WMDs. We miss that he just doesn’t want the Iranians and the Shiites and the Kurds to know he’s powerless.

We’re in danger of doing that now with Iran. We see Iran’s nuclear program the way we want to see it: as a way to nuke Israel and the US. We fail to see the proud Persian people, looking at their conquered neighbor, surrounded by a nuclear Pakistan, a nuclear India, a nuclear Israel, a nuclear Russia, a nuclear US. They are afraid. And they feel that acquiring a nuke is the only way they will prevent their country from being next on Bush’s conquered list.

Bolton is a fool. He sees Iran the way he wants to see them. So does the rest of the Right. I don’t think we can afford another one of their blunders.

Politics

Full of Gas

Neal Boortz and George Will let the gas out of the gas debate. Money quote:

As Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes, there is no yearning for national self-sufficiency concerning other essential goods, such as food, automobiles, airplanes or medicines. Are Democrats worried about security of oil supplies? In some ways, Hayward says, America’s energy supply is more secure than it was in the 1970s, partly because “since 1975, energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product has fallen 48 percent.” Furthermore, “oil represents a shrinking share of total U.S. energy consumption — from 44 percent in 1970 to 40 percent in 2005.” The oil America consumes — only one-eighth of which comes from the Middle East — is used almost entirely in transportation, and accounts for about 40 percent of energy uses. Half of America’s electricity is generated by coal, of which America has a huge abundance.

In one of the first posts on my blog, I said that the defining characteristic of the debate over gas prices was the overwhelming unthinking unrelenting greed . . . of the American people, who have decided that they are entitled to cheap gas for life. I don’t blame the politicians for taking political advantage of this any more than I blame bacteria for infecting a wound. It’s their nature. The fault is with the short-sighted and ignorant American public.

As I noted in the old post, the best illustration of the unrestrained avarice of the consumer is the popular call for a Gas Out! Notice that no sacrifice is demanded. No one is asked to carpool or drive less or use a more fuel-efficient car. No one is instructed to reduce their consumption, and therefore the price, of gasoline. Instead, they’re supposed to throw what amounts to a national hissy fit.

To hell with that. If you’re sick of high gas prices, get a more efficient car, commute less or carpool more.

I have a 100 mile round-trip commute. I’ve cut back to tele-commuting two days a week. And my next car will be even more fuel efficient than my current one. That’s called doing something about the problem. It’s how Americans used to address their issues rather than whining to Congress every time prices spike.

Politics

The Field So Far

Looking over the slate of Presidential candidates and what we’ve learned about them recently, my opinions are little changed.

On the GOP side, I find Romney a little bit unctuous. He seems to be the groomed savvy candidate who says what everybody (in every audience) wants to hear. I’m disappointed that he’s backed off from his previous support of gay rights and abortion choice. It illustrates yet again that the anti-gay agenda of the GOP doesn’t come from the politicians themselves. There is ample documentation that they are perfectly fine with gays in private life. It’s a cold, mean-spirited attempt to drum up anti-gay votes. And that’s not only disgusting and cynical, it’s insulting.

I’m starting to dislike Giuliani. His slam of Ron Paul on the legitimate question of blowback was not only disgusting, it illustrating his intention to run on the ghost of 9/11.

I have been very impressed with Ron Paul. He’s the only one up there actually saying things. And the ire he has stirred up among the Right only makes me like him more. Anyone who can reduce the Right Wing Echosphere to their standard “you want the terorrists to win!” memes so quickly is in my good books.

And I’m sorry, I have to agree with Sullivan. The support for torture and the weasel words and moral equivalency being used to justify it by the GOP candidates is driving me away. At the present time, only McCain and Paul would earn my support.

On the Democrat side, the only candidate I really like is Bill Richardson, if nothing else than for his great ad. Yeah, he’s a little conceited. You have to be in this game. The others haven’t made any impression on me other than Hillary getting more repugnant and Obama veering leftward.

So what do I think is going to happen? As I see it, the GOP choice will be Romney or Giuliani, although that could change if Fred Thompson throws in. The Dems are down to Obama and Hillary, obviously. The Democrats would never nominate Richardson because a) he’s the best candidate; and b) he would have the best chance of winning. And we can’t have that. The Dems have a pathological need to self-destruct by picking the worst candidate, as they did in 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004.

Anyway, it’s a fools’ game to predict who will be at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in two years. But I’m a fool, so I’ll play. The conventional wisdom is that Bush will put the Dems in. I don’t see it that way. The convential wisdom also said that no Republican could win in the wake of Watergate, no one could beat Bush in 1992 and no one could fail to beat Clinton in 1996. And if the Dems forget that Bush isn’t running in 2008, the race is wide wide open. 2008 will be decided, as all race are, on the merits of the actual people running, not the outgoing Administration.

The way I see it, we’re looking at four potential November Smackdowns:

  • Obama vs. Romney. The GQ special. It will be fascinating to watch them debate and debate without saying anything. And the press will eat it up.
  • Obama vs. Giuliani. Obama would kick his ass. I hope. Giuliani is a nasty politician and Obama’s style of kindly nothingness will easily best Rudy’s bare-knuckle 9/11 exploitation.
  • Clinton vs. Romney. Romney wins this one easily. People don’t like Clinton. Even the excitement of a potential female President will not mask her basic nastiness and totalitarian leanings. Even having a slick politician like her husband on her side will not prevent her from getting out the vote . . . for the Republicans. By contrast, Romney has that Clinton-esque ability to come down on both sides of every issue. I would expect it to meet with similar sucess but fewer Oval Office blowjobs.
  • Clinton vs. Giuliani. The NY Senate race we should have had in 2000. Frankly, leave me out of this. This will be nasty nasty nasty. They will both try to be pleasant — and fail. Pleasantness is not in them. The only way Rudi can win is he’s up against someone even less likable (and equally corrupt

    • As you can tell, I’m not terribly optimistic. Romney and Obama cross me as having the best chance to be President come January 2009. They’re slick, optimistic, well-spoken and avoid nastiness. God knows what we’ll get with either of them. But I suspect they will be better than what we’ve got now.

    It would be hard to be worse.

    'Culture'

    Belt Up!

    OK, riddle me this: how come spaceships in sci-fi series, no matter how sophisticated, never have seatbelts to keep the cast from being flung all over the place whenever the ship experiences the slightest jolt? For crying out loud, we’re a few laws away from shooting people for not buckling their seat belts when they’re parked, yet Captain Picard gets flung out of his chair every time someone farts in engineering.

    Politics, War on Terror

    The Moral Question

    You know, I’m sure the Republicans think that morality is a very important issue in politics. That they stand full force against moral relativism (which is the incorrect word they use when they mean “amoralism”).

    So how come is it that when confronted with one of the biggest moral issues of our time — whether or not to torture prisoners because they might be terrorists — the supposed moral stalwarts fall behind weasel words and euphemisms (“enhanced interrogation techniques”), moral equivalence (“Al-Quaeda doesn’t observe the Geneva convention!”), fantasy (“We need Jack Bauer!”) and rationalization (“ticking time bomb”).

    Why is that the only people who define a bright moral line against torture are the RINO and the Libertarian.

    Politics, War on Terror

    Kurdistan?

    Cato takes apart the idea of redeploying to Kurdistan. I’ve always felt this was something being tossed off by ignorami as a way to withdraw without withdrawing.

    Another reason that this commentary misses is strategic. Kurdistan is land-locked. If Iraq turns ugly, the only way to get out is through Turkey. And I’m sure they’d be delighted to have tens of thousands of troops and thousands or armored vehicles marching through their country.

    Politics, Socialism

    Reimporting Drugs

    Why is drug re-importation a bad idea?

    There’s no question that Congress is responding here to popular will. But the long-term implications are palpable. If companies are forced by the U.S. government to continue supplying cheap drugs to countries from which they are then reimported to the U.S. — crowding out the higher-priced domestic supply of drugs — it’s only a matter of time until profits are insufficient to support the enormous costs of R&D for future drugs. No one wants to kill that golden goose, but there it is.

    Let me sum this up for you. In order for senior citizens to get cheap Viagra, we, our children and our children’s children have to surrender new antibiotics for drug-restistant disease, new treatments of evolving Herpes and AIDS viruses, possible cures for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. We would be the first generation in two millenia to have worse health than our parents. And the Congress wants to give this to them.

    I swear. AARP and the other special interests need to adopt an accurate symbol for their movement. I propose the image of an old man violating a baby. That would perfectly reflect what they are doing to future generations.

    Politics

    Paul == Goldwater?

    There’s a buzz buidling up out there about Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Having now viewed the Youtube of the debate, I’ll agree that he clearly stood out from the pack, articulating the views that used to define the conservative-libertarian wing of the GOP. He also made Romney et al. look the panderers they are.

    Right now, the buzz I’m hearing is along the lines of “well, I like him a lot, but he’s got no chance”. I can understand the pessimism, since the public likes their pander. But I don’t see why this excludes supporting him here and now. Maybe he’d have a chance then. Frankly, I’ve never understood this desire people have to vote for the “winnah” instead of the best candidate. Isn’t it better to go down in flames with the candidate you like? Especially in this case? It’s not like if you vote for Paul in the primary, you can’t vote for Romney or whoever in the general election.

    A grass-roots surge for Paul would be yet another 2×4 to the head of the GOP. Judging by the tone of the front-runners, the smack upside the head they received in November hasn’t quite taken. Maybe if Ron Paul is running a close second come January 2008, they’ll get the message.

    In any case, the comparison that jumped out immediately to me while hearing him speak was Barry Goldwater. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we’d be best served by a Barry Goldwater in 2008 – a candidate who emerges from the shadows to lose to a Democrat through no fault of his own (1964 was Kennedy’s martyrdom; 2008 will be Bush blacklash and Obamania). But in his defeat, he infuses the GOP with the conservative-libertarian spirit that needs to be refreshed from time to time. The spirit that will produce the next Reagan.

    One can hope.