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What is that you ask? Is that egg there on my face?
Why, yes.
Yes it is.
It isn't just the French
who are offering to help, it's the whole damned United
Nations
. John Bolton or no. All my carefully constructed Mephistophelean
archetypes are crumbling! Agh! Universe reordering in front of my astonished,
uncomprehending eyes! Must. Seek.
Order.Or
not.Had an interesting discussion with
Sim in the comments here
. I think there is something to the idea that our internal political
divide is starting to poison our international relationships, even apart from
the divisions left over from 2003. I guess the real question is whether it could
be any other way - for some folks, the fact that Europe (read: France and
Germany) were not on side invalidated the whole effort. For others, it
invalidated the opinions of France and Germany. Many Americans tend to hold an
almost messianic belief in our own national rectitude - City on a Hill and all
that. Even most of those who protest against the international policies of
whichever faction happens to be in power at any given time do so out of a sense
that they (the protesters) are the ones protecting the
real
national narrative while the empowered elites are hell-bent for leather on
whipping the national stagecoach over the Precipice of Domestic Disaster and
International Condemnation. (The fact that many of these protesters are joined
and sometimes organized by what can only be described as whack-jobs on the
uttermost fringe of the otherwise unemployable left is only because, whatever
party happens to be in charge, it's mostly made up of grownups, and the
anarchists can't stand that. Speaking of which, I wonder how many of these
folks
are hurrying down to join in the fun down in New Orleans. I mean,
this is their utopia, no? The City in a
Bowl?)This messianic strain combines at
the popular level with an almost juvenile desire to be "liked" - Sally Fields
ain't in it - vis all the tortured, "Why do they hate us?" hair shirts (Caligula
would not have approved). And when you finally contrast all this by
the (perceived? Fine, if you say so) necessity to act in ways that no one else
can on the world stage (it was Clinton appointee Madeleine Albright, after all,
who called the US "the indispensable nation"), these combine in often awkward
and unpredictable ways because the exercise of that power inevitably creates
enemies - you either pick a side when brokering disagreements and earn the
enmity of the other team, or else you push both hotheads face down into the ice
bath, and earn the enmity of both of them. And lots of other folks besides,
each of whom has their own national axe to grind. And it used to be that we knew
that we could count on the camaraderie of the Anglosphere, but then Canada went
and took a powder on us, millions of Brits took to the street waving SWP
banners and it's never quite been the same since. It isn't that the
whole world has to fall in line or else be identified as Enemies of the State:
Everyone has to act in their own national interest, and hopefully that lines up
with "the right" in the way we've all come to understand it. But if we're
dealing with intractable problems of great consequence and your answer is "We
don't actually have a plan, but we know we don't like yours" then you have to
expect a certain degree of hurt feelings all the way
around.It's a
trust
thing.We've gotten so used to either
giving up on the rest of the world, or else waiting until someone else is in
power to try to make
up to the rest of the world that we get a little
shocked when a terrible disaster falls over us and other folks offer their help.
There is a certain lamentable tendency to look at the world with hands scored
from the blood of the endless domestic political duel and ask, "Who are you, and
what are you doing here?"So, I was
thinking: You know. Maybe we should stop
it.And by the way, foreign people?
Thanks. We appreciate it your
help.---And
speaking of Clinton
, I have to admit that the man showed a lot of class over here. Which
are not, truth be told, clauses that I ever though I would find myself stringing
together. But there it is. Clinton may
well be the only two-term president whose legacy is improved by the conduct of
his life
after
leaving
office.---Meanwhile,
closer
to home
:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An angry San
Diego topless dancer pulled out a knife and stabbed a customer after he refused
a lap dance, police said on Thursday.
Lawanda Dixon, 24, was arrested for
assault with a deadly weapon shortly after the altercation with 33-year-old
Melik Jordan at the Dream Girls Cabaret early on Wednesday, San Diego police
Det. Gary Hassen said.
"He was in the club with some friends
watching the shows when she came up and asked if he wanted a lap dance," Hassen
said. "He said no, she got upset about it, they argued back and forth. She
pulled knife out of her bag and stabbed him."
Dixon was taken into custody and police
found methamphetamine in a small metal container in Dixon's bag, Hassen said,
adding that she may face drug charges. Officers also confiscated a small folding
knife.
Jordan was treated for his injuries and
released by a local hospital.
-
Man, I hope that guy is single, or else he is
so
screwed!
---
Which brings me (don't ask how) to the idea of the
social contract - I got a nice note from one of my readers (the other one being
sick) which generated this reply from me:
-
I'm
with you in that I've got the sneaking feeling that we've been caught by a
natural disaster with our drawers down and that it's taken far too long to get
them pulled back up and buckled again. I think it's ironic that the things we've
done post-9/11 to attempt to streamline disaster response may in fact have had
the opposite effect. The military folks are bumping into the FEMA guys who are
tripping all over the local authorities and national guardsmen. I would have
hoped for a more coherent response, the feeling of a well-oiled machine leaping
into action - instead I think we've discovered what we in the Navy call "seams"
in the command and control
structure.
I
also agree with you that there will be time later for finger-pointing and
blame-naming - it's inevitable I guess, and clearly a favorite sport for a
certain kind of muckraker that doesn't actually have any responsibilities apart
from criticizing the "man in the arena," but takes that particular task very
seriously, by God. Especially when the man in the arena represents the "other"
political party. Ugh. But this has become an almost reflexive response for some
folks, as natural to them as their heartbeats, and probably as little subject to
cognitive
control.
The
looting thing seems fairly straightforward to me as well: If you couldn't
execute a person for the crime being committed after a coolly dispassionate
court process, with time to examine evidence, take testimony and weigh motive,
it's pretty hard to justify taking someone's life in the heat of the moment for
taking a toaster which is probably in any case insured. There is a
counter-vailing argument that goes against this notion saying in effect, "we
ought to shoot looters so that the social compact might not be broken, and
greater crimes commited" which of course means in effect that you should kill
people for crimes they may or may not in the future influence or effect -
kind of fails the reductio
ad absurdum test, or else we'd
kill all the people well in advance, to keep any of them from committing any
serious crimes, or encouraging others to do
so.
I've
got no problem killing people who would shoot at rescue helicopters though. Just
need to be careful and precise in your targeting, or else the story will be one
of the military shooting up pregnant women only trying to find water for their
toddlers. Speaking of which, I wonder to what degree the media, conditioned over
the last serveral years to find a way to present the bad news as all the news is
contributing to the general sense of catastrophe in the
making?
We'll
pull through. It'll be hard, but we'll pull through.
---
This whole thing has been an enormous kick in the
jimmy, and there will be plenty of blame to go all the way around. I don't know
that any other place in world history has gone so quickly from First World
sybaritic excess to Third World execrable need in so short a period of time.
Well, the aid is flowing in now, the country and the government (they are not
entirely the same thing) are mobilized and we'll soon make things better, a
little bit at a time. We will all continue to studiously ignore the elephant of
race and class that's squatting in the public square, in the hopes that maybe it
will either a) go away, or 2) no one else will notice it.
-
And someday, maybe, we'll all grow up enough to have
an adult conversation about what all of this meant, and what to do about
it.
---
And now, I go with SNO to the Imperial Valley, in
order to do a thing that we do every year, right about this time. Whenever I'm
not at sea.
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