Not really feeling terribly analytical. But I’ve come across some interesting things on the web.
Looks like the winning candidate in Ossetia may have gotten beat down by her political opponents. Russia, meanwhile, is not convinced there won’t be a renewed hostilities there some day with Georgia. This analysis of the August 2008 war is as interesting and honest as it is comprehensive.
Looks like Romney’s struggling. I think this will all inure to his benefit. And Santorum seems the other likeable and potentially effective candidate running. Between those two I could go either way.
McCain meanwhile says we should be arming the Allahu Akbar shouting rebels in Syria. Perhaps they are fighting for the noble principle of mob justice, like their predecessors in Libya.
I find Obama’s contraception “compromise” kind of insulting to the intelligence. If religious employers must pay for insurance and if those insurers must provide contraception, where does Obama think the money is coming from? Here, as in other cases, he uses the deus ex machina of imaginary piles of money out there that he knows how to spend better than businesses. I also find it funny that when the state gets involved in every private relation–as it does under Obamacare and many other intrusive laws–resistance whose sole goal is to protect one’s own autonomy and conscience is treated as if it were the same as the Church dictating how society must behave. Such is the upside down logic of totalitarianism. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Carry on.
The Marines thankfully did not take the side of an emotionally unstable suicide case over what sounds like ordinary “in the field” discipline. Yes real hazing can sometimes be bad. This ain’t it.
And the military slightly expands combat roles for women. No word yet on a comprehensive study of the great expense of recruiting women, caring for their bastard children (in many cases), and the ways they perform less effectively (and create environments where men perform less well) than the all male units of yesteryear.
The highest act of democracy, a plebiscite, is condemned as irrational animus and hatred by the benighted Ninth Circuit. This wicked act of a backwater equivalent of the farthest reaches of Appalachia–i.e., well known parochial hellhole of California–cannot be trusted to rule on such matters as marriage and the laws related to it. So say our philosopher kings!
Just in time for Black History Month: a suppressed story of black mutiny during WWII. Of course, this will be presumptively seen as a justifiable response to white oppression. But since we know not every bad act fits this pattern–such as the near deadly beating of the truck driver in the LA Riots or the massive gang rapes in Cleveland Texas–why assume that about this too? Oh well, can’t we have a CNN special on a 75 year old lynching case or something?
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The story of the mutiny at Townsville is really interesting. I mean, this wasn’t a matter of a demonstration or a bar fight – this was a flat-out assassination attempt, that at least partially succeeded. It’s not surprising that it was hushed up at the time, but it’s odd that it stayed that way. In that regard, Mencius Moldbug is right – we’re still learning a lot abot WWII.
On reflection, I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised. All events that have mythic resonance to liberals, such as the Civil War or WWII or the Civil Rights struggle are always boiled down into simplistic “White Hat vs. Black Hat” narratives, with any moral ambiguities in the situation only being brought up at times and in ways that can tar conservatives (i.e., the decision to nuke Hiroshima was a liberal one from start to finish, but it’s only mentioned today in a context designed to trash the U.S. as a whole, or our military services, or “patriotism”). So such inconvenient facts such as the blacks who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, or the hundreds of thousands of Europeans who volunteered to fight for Hitler in WWII, or that Martin Luther King was surrounded by Communists his entire career, or that there were LOTS of Japanese spies and sympathizers on the U.S. Pacific Coast at the start of WWII, or that McCarthy was essentially right about Red penetration of the government under the New Deal, are simply not mentioned in most standard histories of the period. Specialists know this stuff, and will admit that it is true if pressed, but otherwise, it get a pass. Such things would only “confuse” people.