Is Anybody Out There? For about a year and a half, I endeavored to update this political blog (in my own terms of reference, "polblog") every single day without fail. I hoped to build an audience. After that, I lost some interest, since I had heard from very few readers, some of whom I exchanged email addresses with and then communicated with privately. The service that provides this blog free of charge (why?) does not permit me to keep track of how many readers I have unless I pay a monthly fee, which I'm not about to do. I'm just friggin' cheap/frugal, and don't spend money I don't have on things I don't really need. Being raised in a family of six children helped me appreciate that, as the Rolling Stones' song says, "you can't always get what you want."
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I have another blog, "Newark USA", which is a fotoblog, that is, with pix, not just text. It gives me much more sway for my interests. Newark, NJ, it will astound many people to hear, is an enormously good place to live, and not just because it is within a half hour's drive of Manhattan. Every day I upload to my "Nwk blog" at least one foto, and usually more. (Maybe I should shorten that shorthand reference, as to "Nblog" or "nb", but there are limits to abbreviation. I get irritated, sometimes, at the insistence of some people on insisting upon an arbitrary and unreasonable deadline or restriction, such as two digit country codes, upon things. TV shows like ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (which, by the way, is a beautiful show, spiritually speaking; and Ty Pennington, its host, wouldn't be half bad-looking if he'd comb his hair like a normal human being) make a practice of imposing absolutely arbitrary deadlines upon projects that could perfectly well be completed later. As a society, we tend to impose unreasonable deadlines on things being done by X date. Is there really any significant harm done to society if something is done X + 20 days or X + 136 days? I would rather things be done RIGHT than that they be done "on time", according to the schedule that someone I don't know might set. But, cable channel after cable channel, we hear of this endeavor or that running out of time. Why? Each of us eventually runs out of time, when we die. But why would an expedition to explore the sea floor in a particular location run out of time? Will the sea floor explode if it isn't explored that day? Will the sea over it evaporate and leave the ancient artifacts on the seabed so dried-out that they are too fragile to touch? Does anybody care if the construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza came in over budget and a year late?
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I would rather things be done right than that they be done "on time" according to some arbitrary, and perhaps unreasonable, schedule. Nature does not impose timetables. Things happen, but without some fool insisting "Now, people!" )
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Some things are urgent, however. The U.S. occupation of Iraq has given rise to violence that, absent that source, might not have arisen at all. Think "bar fight". World affairs are not, necessarily, one whit more reasonable than what happens in a bar when two guys, with their own, very personal issues, run into each other while under the influence of alcohol.
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In the largest of connections, I have already stated that Iran, if it wishes to pursue a nuclear-weapons program, need only denounce its accession to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Then the UN would have no basis upon which to impose sanctions. So the artificial emergency we see cannot be real. It is contrived, theater, for various audiences.
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Iran is Persia. The history of Persia dwarfs our own. Persians know that. We NEED to know that, and get a clue.
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In Persian terms, the United States is just the Roman Empre under Justinian: it reaches, but does not grasp, because it does not have the power to grasp. We could impose our will upon an unruly planet, but that would require us to make up our minds about what our role in the world ought to be. Should we be mere observer? Activist? On whose side, of which issue? On what principle(s)?
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People of principle have no problem with any of these questions. Politicians of all parties have serious problems with any of them.
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"The People" is the only restraint upon political parties, but too many of the people know NOTHING about the issues. Or care. The morality of issues must be basic to our actions, but is not. Nor will it be as long as jingoists are allowed to frame everything in their terms: "supporting our troops". The people of Nazi Germany were very proud of their troops. That did not make the behavior of those troops moral.
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Americans must take the highest road, and remove the "US" from U.S., in evaluating the propriety or impropriety of U.S. Government actions. To make matters simplest, let's pose all issues in terms of Nazi Germany: if Nazi Germany ran the Guantanamo internment camp, would that be okay? If Nazi Germany attacked Iraq, on the pretense that it was looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, would that be okay? If Nazi Germany had to admit, years after it had conquered and occupied Iraq, that there never were Weapons of Mass Destruction, but argued that that didn't matter, would we buy it?
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Americans must always ask, "Does the Nazi model fit us? Are we today's Nazis?"
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And people who value my commentary need to tell me to continue it, because I'm tired of sending words out on the wind and hearing nothing back.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,242 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:06 PM