It's probably a mistake to wax nostalgic about
the Cold War...
But sometimes I do
anyway.
It was a time when many of
the more hyperventilated set lived in fear of the nuclear clock ticking ever closer to midnight.
This was a concoction of the Union of Concerned Scientists, or something along
those lines - you almost couldn't parody it now - who made a great deal of high
visibility hay out of stridently moving the minute hand forward a minute or two
every time something didn't go quite their way in the world at large. And then
they quietly cranked it back again when no one was looking. Because eventually,
even the perpetually hyperventilated would realize that midnight had come and
gone, and "Hey, presto!" we were all still
here.
The 60's. The Cold War. Civil
Defense drills in the school hall: Run from the classroom and sit on the deck.
Bend your head between your legs. Cross your arms over your legs. Kiss your a$$
goodbye.
We were children, but we
weren't stupid - we saw our parents stockpiling the canned meats in the
basement. We saw them shake their heads, and throw them all away. We got the
point. If the bad thing happened, it wasn't going to be OK. But there was reason
to hope:
If you grew up in the 60's,
like me, you formed your world view around one very simple element of the
cultural zeitgeist: Star Trek.
Right,
the one with James William Shatner as Kirk .
(pace,
RPL)
It was optimistic, and forward
leaning - New Frontier, and all that. Whatever problems we'd had at home;
tribal, national, sectarian, economic - they'd all been put to bed by 2300. We'd
figured it out. Each week Kirk would save the EarthUnion Federation of Rather Concerned Planets from some
externalthreat . Klingons (sorry), and Romulans and Tribbles and such. And! It was
multi-cultural: The dusky hued Uhuru ran the comms suite in a mini-skirt,
leaving us all to draw our own conclusions about the way things having to do
with race would be in the future. The Russian, Chekov ran the conn during General Quarters.
Every once in a while we were lead to believe that the bachelor captain had a
vigorous go at Yeoman Rand - our evidence was a close-up of them face to
face, breathing hard, and then the director would cut to him pulling on his
boots, in the privacy of his cabin, while she brushed out her hair in the mirror
over the cabin sink. That was all we
needed.
It was the 60's, and
everything in between was left to our imaginations. Which, as a 9 year old,
didn't reach as far as we could have hoped. But for aspiring naval officers, it
was good to see that rank still had its privileges. (Although I have to admit
it's true that the actual naval service, circa 1978-2005 has had its moderate
disappointments along these lines. Kirk's liberties with the Yeoman would have
gotten him very quickly cashiered in this
century.)
(Didja ever wonder what
happened to Mudd's women? I mean, in real
life?)
But going back to Chekov - he
and Kirk always had a bit of clever repartee going on - after the universe was
saved again, Kirk would mention chess, for example (to Spock's arched eyebrow) and Chekov would
riposte in his best Russian accent, "Ah, yes - chess - it was inwented in
Moscow." And we'd all laugh out loud, and share happy glances in the comfort of
our blue-light lit living rooms, right along with the cast up there on the
screen. Including Kirk, who would purse his lips and shake his head, and say,
"Yes of course, Mr Chekov." Because it didn't really matter any more - that was
all ancient history. A friendly rivalry that all had somehow all worked out for
the best, deep in their past, somewhere in our future. But we believed, we were
satisfied to see that in 2266, we'd gotten over it. There hadn't been any
climactic war. The Russians loved their children too. We figured as
much.
And we weren't entirely
surprised, by this. I mean, we had "The Russians
are Coming " to remind us that we weren't so very different from them.
The little girl almost fell from the church spire towards the end there, and the
Russian sailors helped to save her, earning the townspeople's respect. We got
that. Understood.
Picture the modern
mini-series where we laugh with the Salafist jihadis three hundred years hence:
That was all good fun, Abu Musb al-Zarqawi - what a wicked knave you were with a
butcher's knife, back in the day. Innocent blood everywhere! Hah,
hah!
Can't you feel
it?
Yah. Me
either.
-------------------
Just
got the strangest phone call - the Hobbit has a friend, a lady from South Korea.
She's apparently convinced herself that because she's heading back to join her
husband in Seoul, that she needs to buy gas masks and bio suits.
Somehow, she has fixated on the
Hobbit as the right person to ask about all these
things.
She calls a
lot.
The Hobbit was working out (I
just finished the PRT yesterday, and am taking a break, he said triumphantly) so
I answered the phone. No, I don't think you'll need one. Yes, I think you'll be
OK. Kim Chong Il isn't an idiot, he just plays one on TV. The most important
thing to him in this whole world is that he gets to keep being in charge, eating
caviar, drinking champagne, and dating the blonde women. He knows that lobbing
nukes into the south will only 1) kill the goose that's laying the golden egg,
and 2) bring to a rapid end his little party. Yes he'll try to rattle his saber
to extort concessions. True, he'll make mischief where he can, so long as he
thinks he can get away with it. We shouldn't let him. But neither should we
shove him up against the wall, to a place where he's got nothing to lose.
Because even a cornered rat will lash out, and at that point, it's
Katie-bar-the-door and there will be no end to the
suffering.
Which is what happens if
you let a homicidal tyrant get his hands around nukes. You have to deal with
him, talk him down, hope to change the
subject.
It almost makes you wish we
had a policy of pre-emption, doesn't
it?
Oh, it was never going to be easy
with the Koreans - too much bloodshed and destruction if we got it wrong, too
many intersections of big power conflicts of
interest.
----------------
Turns
out I did know one of those guys that were killed in the midair over Iraq. He
was rock solid. Hard to believe.
I don't know how or why these sorts
of things surprise me any more, but they still
do.
------------------
Nice
dinner time chat with the Biscuit last night - I mumbled something about "If you
want peace, prepare for war."
She
replied something she'd seen in a graffito near her school: "You will never gain
peace by preparing for war."
Which
gave us an opportunity for an interesting dialogue. I went all Socratic,
offering the theoretical choice between fighting for freedom and peace through
slavery - which would she choose, for
herself?
Ultimately we talked
ourselves into a position where we recognized that silly people were free to say
all kinds of inane things that are unsupported by the history of humanity
because other people were willing to stand watch along the parapets while they
did so.
I consider this something of
a victory. Your mileage may
vary.
-------------------
Did
you realize that the common latin quotation,
"Si vis pacem,
parabellum" is actually reverse engineered
from English to Latin? That's not the way the caesars would have heard it or
said it in their time. The Roman military historian Vegitius, to whom the
original is ascribed, wrote, "Igitur
qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum."
I don't know latin, but am
nonetheless a fan of latin quotes. I know, it's almost precious, but still.
Some of my
favorites?
"Illegitimi
non carborundum." Don't let the bastards
wear you
down.
"Qui
tacet, videtur consentire." He who is
silent, is assumed to consent.
Ah -
and here's my favorite, recently:
"Oderint dum
metuant."
Michael
Kelly, February 26, 2003:
"Tyranny truly is a horror: an immense, endlessly bloody, endlessly painful,
endlessly varied, endless crime against not humanity in the abstract but a lot
of humans in the flesh. It is, as Orwell wrote, a jackboot forever stomping on a
human face.
"I understand
why some dislike the idea, and fear the ramifications of, America as a
liberator. But I do not understand why they do not see that anything is better
than life with your face under the boot. And that any rescue of a people under
the boot (be they Afghan, Kuwaiti or Iraqi) is something to be desired. Even if
the rescue is less than perfectly realized. Even if the rescuer is a great,
overmuscled, bossy, selfish oaf. Or would you, for yourself, choose the
boot?"
Rest in peace, Mike. We miss
you.
--------------------
Tonight
we're trying Indian
food.
--------------------
With
a
dot.
--------------------
Have
a great weekend!
Posted @
06:26 PM
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Posted in
""
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Sendit
|
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
