South Ocean Anarchists.
I recall speaking to an author some years back now re the anti-whaler daredevils who pursue the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The human motives are various; however, the pursuit of a superior and hostile force seems to be the excitement for the anti-whalers. The mania is for, "where is the fleet?" Do we have good GPS? The resolution of that book was that there was a source onboard the Japanese whaler who secretly gave out very good details as to location, and the anti-whalers found the big Japanese trawler and played chicken in rolling seas at full throttle. There was a moment in which everyone almost lost reason, and then the whaler turned away. This fresh incident concocted by the anarchist Sea Shepherd looks to be a similar feat of folly and propoganda. The video is shot from the whaler. The seas are not severe this time of year (summer). There is a general sense that anti-whaling makes for a better environment. The puzzle remains why there is a utility in risking everyone's life. Neither side will back down. Both sides are thrilled. Is this not the logic of the Cold War? Brinksmanship is the game; the players entertain risk and then assume a marmalade righteousness. The same for our Arab-speaking adversaries -- the rag-tag hotheads and confidence men called jihadists. The same for those apocalyptic sadists, the Tehran Twelvers. Both jihdists and Twelvers are threatening (daring) the vastly superior skills and deadliness of the US and its kindred of order. When Bin Laden and his posse try one of their ops (Christmas bomber), it is for the thrill of anarchy that they feel in their cause of a higher purpose, their more eccentric literalist mandate (jihad and the coming of the global caliphate). Thrill-seekers. Anarchists. Ahabs. There is no necessity to choose between the jihad and the anti-whaler anarchists. Pequod of North Waziristan in pursuit of the white whale of America. Moby Dick does not bargain; he does not negotiate; he does not look back; he does not wait. The American exceptionalism is that of a behemoth of the deep. One of a kind. Live with it or perish. (Same for the anti-whalers in American political tribes: mates on the Pequod, Ishmaels of the Left and Right; bystanders.) Who doubts the legend of America will dwarf the screeching of the jihad and the pomposity of the mullahs? Hear Bin Laden and the Ayatollahs lament: "... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
Moby Dick dives. Smile.
Once again JB writes sphinx-like commentary. Is he saying we are like Moby Dick, or we used to be like Moby Dick, or he wishes we were more like Moby Dick, or...?
It seems as if he is fighting an internal battle on this point. On the one hand, he has Roggio and Vlahos almost daily reaffirming his suspicion that Obama is a wimp and that wimps finish last in this world. On the other hand, he does the agonizing "Were we wrong to carbonize Japanese babies?" self-inspection routine with Pellegrino. This dichotomy on John's part also routinely manifests itself with his "Last Days of the Republicans" series. If the Elephant is dead, then why are we routinely cheering its accomplishments in stopping the evil Donkey?
Let me set forth a hypothesis to prove or disprove, or just for discussion. Submitted for your consideration. John does his daily dichotomous dithering because the anti-John (aka Rush Limbaugh) doesn't dither, and as long as he (John) dithers, he won't ever be vilified by the far left in the same fashion that they vilify Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
I obviously enjoy John's show a great deal or I wouldn't keep listening, but at some point I'd like to finally understand the greatest "Known Unknown" of all, i.e., JB himself.
In his post above, John has very deftly skipped to the last page. It’s a given how all this will end. It’s also a given that we won’t be around when it does. We presently find ourselves laboring somewhere in the middle of this book. Knowing the outcome does not necessarily rule out writer’s block.
Lou has it right. The time is now to take a stand; to declare oneself. These are interesting if not crucial times. Remaining on the sidelines will do nothing to save one from the arrows. Pray these are arrows and not nuclear bombs. They won’t be. If jihads should ever get their hands on WMD, they would likely succeed only in blowing off their own genitals or worse; the commies would fail so spectacularly, they would literally be laughed out of town and told never to come back.
What surely would become a lasting regret is not taking sides – any side. Triangulation is never a virtue. Better to take that fatal hit and be declared a ‘martyr’ for the cause than suffer the eternal shame of having sat out the war in Switzerland.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Especially when it's so easy to take sides now. There's so little middle ground. I don't remember any time in my lifetime when the lines were so clearly drawn. That's why I frankly do not understand this comment I hear made all the time that "The Democrats are bad, but the Republicans aren't much better." That's like somebody who doesn't want to come down on either side. John makes much of the independents on his show, and John Avlon is one of my favorite panelists, but even he has a bit of duplicity in my way of seeing things. There was a poll on Politico recently: are Democrats really more arrogant than Republicans? So you'd vote and then leave your comments. It ran pretty close to even - a slight majority said yes, Democrats were more arrogant. But the comment I liked best came out of left field (and I paraphrase): "The truth is that Independents are the most arrogant of anyone. Because they won't commit; they're too good to sign up with either team; they'll just wait to see who's doing well and who's not and then side with the team that's doing well." Isn't that the truth? The real definition of an Independent is somebody who is perennially afraid to commit because they are perennially afraid to lose.
The cure for that phobia is to be a registered Libertarian for a decade or so. I was trying to remember if I'd EVER backed a winning candidate in my life and I think the answer is no. Try voting every time for somebody who has ZERO chance of winning, and it makes it a lot easier to commit to a side that only wins part of the time!
"With friends like these..."
I'll spare you an essay on the folly of predicting the future with computer models, but will agree that none of us will still be alive when it all gets settled. That is, unless the second coming is in the next few weeks or months. I will note that every time re-read the Book of Revelation it seems less like science fiction than it did before.
I'm known among my friends for recommending they educate themselves by listening to, watching or reading all manner of things. In the audio spectrum that includes Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and of course the John Batchelor show. Of course I'm used to being ignored in this regard, but every now and then suddenly there is a new convert to one thing or another and I start hearing things like "Did you catch Rush's show today? It was great!"
Well, yes, I'm sure it was, and I still listen often to all these and more. But the fact is if you read the Drudge Report in the morning you already know the topics for all the daytime shows I just mentioned. Those shows are opinion shows, laced with facts (and to get the complete facts you have to read the link that Drudge points to). John's show, to me anyway is primarily a news and analysis show, laced of course with opinions. It's the only modern show I know of that uses the concept of a "correspondent" properly, and sometimes these turn out to be lefties, but you have to put up with their viewpoints to get at the facts they are in a unique position to have access to.
I have no problems with opinion, even when it isn't diluted by any sort of news content. But there is more than enough of preaching to the choir out there already (from both political extremes). What there is not enough of is facts. The MSM reports 10 percent of it (and they all pick the same 10 percent for convenience.) The rest you have to get from raw data, wading through it on the Internet, or watching C-Span and all the foreign channels 72 hours a day, or you can get a nice chunk of it in 4 hours from John's show, saving you, um... 68 hours to do other things.
Irreplaceable.
Macbeach ... I don't mind John not having or offering any opinion on a given topic. What baffles me his his offering two or more sometimes widely conflicting opinions. I realize that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" (Emerson) but hey, I have a little mind, I guess, so I'm asking for an explanation at least as to what I perceive as inconsistencies!
Completely agree with you that I don't need somebody to tell me what to think.
The thing that hooked me on the JB show to begin with was trying to figure out how Larry Johnson, who seemed to be the most libertarian-minded panelist of all, could have a blog that is literally crawling with Hillary Clinton lovers. I've been working on this problem for over 18 months now and still don't have an answer. The best hypothesis I can come up with is that they are all SO bitter over Hillary's loss to Obama in the primaries that they have become some of the loudest cheerleaders for Obama to fail. The thing I wonder is, if they've been lying down with conservatives for so long, won't they have our fleas?
And the Sioux use to "count coups". Look where it got them.
Two things: (1) Hillary is cut from the same cloth as Obama. She might be more politically savvy than he is and, as a consequence, would get us there faster. Obama gets tripped up by race. I don't believe Hillary would play the race card as much as Obama seems willing to.
(2) It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that when making a choice between two things - such as between Democrat and Republican, for example - it’s like a coin toss: 50-50. But the Left has skewed the argument so as to label everything to the right of the 20% radical left as radical right. Once you recognize that the choice you’re now faced with is really (between) 20 (and) 80, you realize that, unless you’re in support of the radical (left) 20 per centers, your only other choice is to align yourself with the majority 80% that remains; that the Left is essentially disingenuous when it tries to push any and all opposition over into the 20% loony right.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Peter, re your first point: I know Hillary is similar to Obama. In fact, I regarded her as the more dangerous of the two candidates back in early 2008, which is why I supported Obama to anyone who would listen. My calculation was that Obama was nowhere near as good an administrator as Clinton. Therefore, even though his rhetoric, if taken seriously, was a bit more frightening than Clinton's, I was willing to gamble that once he got in he wouldn't be able to push his ideas through. Put mathematically, he had a 20% chance of adopting a minus 10 policy and 80% chance of adopting a minus 2 policy (viewed on LF's scale of +10 to -10): so he had an expected value of .2 x (-10) + .8 x (-2) = -2.0 -1.6 = -3.6. HC had a 100% chance of adopting a minus 7 policy, so her expected value was -7.0. So the obvious strategy for a conservative is to throw all his weight behind the liberal candidate with the lower expected value and the higher variance, and my strategy has worked so far (knock wood).
On an unrelated matter, that author that JB had on last night (or was it Thursday?) who had a 10-point argument for why we as consumers were becoming increasingly out of touch with the world, really had me going for a while. He said we all consume too much, eat too much, are too afraid, expect too much, are too out of touch with nature. I'm going Bravo, Bravo at this point. Then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like "And of course this is all contributing to Climate Change.." at that moment my mental Chuck Barris came out and hit his Gong really loudly and a trapdoor opened and another contestant was done for.
The giant still sleeps. Isoroku Yamamoto once wrote in his diary:
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." The Movie "Tora Tora Tora" Quotes him as stating it, but this is unresolved.
We defeated the British (twice), the French, The Germans, The Japanese, The Soviets, Saddam Hussein. Our Defense Forces are still the envy of the world.
Many in the public forum and government still believe Al Qaeda is a nuisance and should be treated like a car thief or armed criminal. These are typically the same who look to International law over American, yet they Ignore the Geneva Conventions, which are older than the United States. The use the Geneva Conventions when "torture" is accused, yet ignore it when armies fail to fight by standard rules of engagement, hide behind civilians, and refuse to wear uniforms.
There are others who refuse to believe the threat comes from Radicalized Muslims, not Buddhists or Lutherans.
There are those who believe the threat comes from the devastating poverty in the Muslim world: the Crime/Poverty theory has be refuted, Crime in the USA is going down with 10%+ unemployment.
Ignorance and Hatred are the root causes, Hatred of Israel, the US, and European culture and success are part of the bigotry.
Looking forward to the "Piece of Paper" moment with the Saintly Barack Hussein Obama, praise be his holy name.
Wisdom
Sapientia - I would argue that the root cause of all evil is the Democratic Party (and everything it stands for).
Oops, the Geneva Conventions are older than the UN, not the USA. There are a few good Dems out there. Very Few.
I am drawn by the allusion to the strongest horse. I think there is a contest afoot between the salafi/arab/jihadi's and the khomenist/persian/apocolyptico's to capture the caliph's banner and ride before the death cult segment of Um'ma.
In this contest the US and Israel are just aspects of the whale, props in the game not players.
The whalers giggle about murder and underpants bombs and negotiations to nowhere. They innovate - can breast implant bombs be far behind? Each defensive move we make, each pat down, each delay, each murderous dupe scores a point for one side or another.
We need to find Liddell Hart's deep turning movement x 2 as an alternative to the wack-a-mole/chat-a-mole dichotomy currently offered.
As an aside on the JBS style: I find it refreshing and stimulating not to be able to instantly know the views of a source. Instead JBS pushes me to hear from perspectives that sometimes make me grind my teeth. The benefit is it breaks me out of the non-productive rut.