A BLACK-EYED SUSAN ON PREAKNESS DAY FOR...
...poster "Harvey" and his story on Tuesday's blog entry. This dark little pass note was probably the most significant piece of writing to appear on this site in the two years of its existence. Follow.
The problem is not George W. Bush. It's not Dick Cheney. It's not Karl Rove. It's not Alberto Gonzales. It's certainly not Irving Libby, Jr., nor is it Paul Wolfowitz. It's not Rush Limbaugh. It's not the Supreme Court. It's definitely not the U.S. Generals. It's not Israel. It's not the Christian Right. If anything, these are EXAMPLES of people and collections of people who do exactly WHAT THEY OUGHT TO DO GIVEN THE STATE OF NATURE THAT OBTAINS.
Karl Rove fights his corner with talent and tenacity. It's not his problem that the other side would rather be "good" than win. Karl Marx was a bad economist but a pretty good political scientist. A state gets to the correct "middle" when two extremes fight equally hard. The U.S.A., however, does not have two extremes. It has one extreme and one enabler. It has two fascist parties, one of which is absolutist on, say, abortion and another which is open to suggestion. No? How did one of Europe's most right-wing leaders, Jacques Chirac, become a greater villain than Hitler or Stalin in the United States of Embarrassment?
The problem is YOU and ME. In the kind of abstract short-hand we use here that seems to alienate so many readers, the problem is that we've made Dick Wolf and Stephen Bochco and whoever the fuck came up with "CSI" rich. No? Take Kelso's little quiz: what do each of these terms invoke in you, "career prosecutor" and "criminal defense lawyer"? The guess here is that the range of responses goes from "good" and "evil" to "good" and "necessary evil". Try it with "Men And Women In Uniform" and "Anti-War Protestors". Try it with "abortion." Try it with "recreational drugs." Try it with "straight" and "gay". Try it with "Barry Bonds." You get the point and please spare Kelso your liberal bona fides. They are not welcome here. Not so long as the producer of fascist police shows is rich and the cancer researcher is mortgaged to the gonads.
Just ask yourself why the White-Woman-At-The-Panther-Meeting in Harvey's story is a figure of ridicule. You know the answer; because she was a credulous innocent who didn't bother to think the through the range of results before opening her fucking mouth. That woman is you and me.
We can't control our results but we can control our decisions. It behooves all of us to think through as many elements of a choice of action or a choice of approval or disapproval before making it. Kelso has made thousands of decisions that worked out poorly but can at least say proudly that he thought through the Bill Clinton/Sister Souljah contretemps and still believes the latter had a point no matter how inartfully she expressed it. Kelso also was the first boy on his block to tear down a flag on the morning of 9/11/01 because he thought through the likely outcomes and guessed right. Nothing good was going to come out of this, and so it was.
You want to save the world? Forget Greenpeace and Hillary Clinton. Google "Yucca Mountain," think it through, and do something about it. Or don't.
Circular Quay at longish odds or King Of The Roxy at really long odds. Anaheim over Detroit and if Anaheim fails, Ottawa over Detroit in the finals. Look for an opportunity to fade Roger Federer with a rag who has a little clay court ability at a big price.
Kelso's Nuts love you.
7 comments:
Kelso, I hate to say this, but I think you are being somewhat simplistic here. Yes, in the end, it is a matter of *you* and *me* ... *we* elected George W. Bush and didn't toss him out despite all evidence that he was, well, George W. Bush.
But, in reality, come on, we are, for the most part, as individuals, powerless in all of this. I hate to sound so negative. But we really are. Yucca Mountain: many, many MANY individuals have been fighting for as long as I can remember to stop it. It's funny, I never thought about it, but the Yucca Mountain controversy was the *Climate Change* story for the 70's and 80's. The *science* was never in said some. For others, the *science* was flawed ... funny how The Right was on the *the science justifies the project* bandwagon then and The Left was on the *the science is severely flawed* bandwagon back then. How things have changed (or not).
Anyway, your argument seems to be the one that says, if you don't like violence on TV and the movies, then just turn off your TV and don't go to those movies. All well and good. But the critical mass, unfortunately, DOES watch those shows on TV and DOES spend their hard-earned dollars to see them in the movies.
Wasn't it Deming who said you can't blame the little guy? The guy who is implementing the strategy established by upper management? When the working conditions are bad, and the assembly line guy can't see because of poor lighting, then it's horribly unfair to fire him because the widgets aren't put together right.
What's my point? Not sure. It's probably buried somewhere in there. Or not.
PS ... that story about the white woman in the black panther meeting made me fall off my chair laughing !!! some people just need to be knocked about the head sometimes ...
OH ... and why is it that the two pretty boys in the campaign (edwards, romney) are "uncomfortable" with gays? (or, as john edwards says, 'those people' ... ). hmmm. i just can't imagine why that would be so, Kelso. what think the K-Man?
Yucca Mountain may not be as simple as all that. The environmentalist Lovelock and others have now said buclear power is the only practical solution to global warming. Wind power, solar, forget all that. France already gets 80% from nukes, and so would be if not for Carly Simon and what was that guy's name, John Hiatt? "The warm power of the sun..." or whatever? Yucca may be a necessary tradeoff.
a colleague of mine has been hired to do construction management work for a danish company that manufactures windmill blades. most of their work has been in denmark, but the american market has apparently exploded. they cannot keep up with the demand and are building manufacturing facilities throughout the western united states. obviously, i'm not saying that this proves anything other than that there are a lot of windmills going up. in fact, i think harvey is probably right about nuclear energy. i hate to sound melodramatic but the inevitability of a mostly nuclear world implies the sad fact of the terrible deal with the devil we, as a country, or world or planet, have made.
it didn't have to come down to this. or, rather, it shouldn't have.
I'll start with Harvey's comment because it requires less chin-scratiching to cover. My problem with Yucca Mountain is not a problem with nuclear power, per se. I don't know enough about the economics including externalities of nuclear power versus other options to offer an opinion that's worth anything. Common sense, however, tells me that the Yucca Mountain plan is bad because it requires the transporation of nuclear waste by truck and rail THROUGH CLARK COUNTY. And I sure as hell know how many people live THERE and how many accidents per truck mile happen. Clark County velly, velly densely populated and only houses, oh, just the world's most popular tourist destination. I have the same problems with Indian Point, Brookhaven Labs, and Plum Island. Clark County maybe some kind of distant abstraction but how about Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and -- yes -- Manhattan, Kings, Bronx, and Queens. Richmond can go up in a puff of smoke!
Anita, you've brought up many excellent points and I'll address them properly in a full posting when I get a chance. Been mad busy. I remember we were both Markowitz fans but I didn't realize that you were a Deming-ite like me, though I should have. Somehow, I feel like the keys to the vault exist in the works of Keynes, Deming, M. Friedman, Galbraith, Coase, Markowitz, Marx, Nash, Kelly, Veblen, Modigliani & Miller, Black & Scholes, and Brennan & Schwartz. It's all there. Find the pearls of wisdom from the above, weight them properly and you can get rich or save the world or -- to use a contemporary cliche -- die trying.
Cop shows were meant as meme. Sometimes that's all you've got to work with.
You could bring the waste in from the north. But that would require a drive along 93 and 375 then south taking you right next to Groom Lake. That got shot down quickly but that area does not exist.
The Vegas option runs you down 15 then across the north to 95 and out of town.
Anonymous: down 15 and across to 95? The most significant N/S arteries of the U.S.A.? Jesus Christ.
Kelso may have to weigh up this nuclear power thing versus other opitions.
Post a Comment