Solway on his Obama fixation
David Solway is a Canadian poet who used to be a man of the “soft” left.
He was happy there. But, as with many, 9/11 began for him a period of learning, reading, thinking, and ultimately revising his political opinions. That change in turn has led to the severing of relationships with many of his liberal friends—not his doing, but theirs.
Sound familiar? Sure does to me.
Now Solway offers this meditation on how it was that he started out liking and even admiring Obama, and ended up not trusting a word the man says. He says he has written of:
Obama as a defective scholar, as a greedy restaurateur, as a mad apologist, as a Science Fiction Destructor, as a sorcerer’s apprentice, as a sly feline, as a flamboyant orchid, as President Stuxnet, as an arboreal lycopod, as an arrogant college sophomore with failing grades, as a Burgher of Schilda, as the Playboy of the Western World, as the Pied Piper, as Zartan who assumes the identity of the president in the film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, as the reincarnation of the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi, and more. I have even suffered nightmares in which he appears like a spook out of the yawning earth to haunt a terrified people.
Solway is stunned that so many intellectuals and friends of his have exhibited such fawning admiration for Obama, which persists for many in the absence of any evidence to support it. But as a poet, he must know how often that’s the way of love.
It’s not love, the fawning admiration is a necessary facade, so as not to have to face the degree of white guilt present.
I am now convinced that the left are “a little people, a silly people” (apologies to Lawrence of Arabia) — and easily deluded. They elected a charismatic charlatan who had no experience or valid knowledge of history or of the true American experience. Obama is an amateur in foreign policies and has no grounded values on which to center himself. He sways in the wind and is going to send this country into oblivion.
Addition to the list: Little Zaches, nicknamed Zinnober.
Obama looks very lost right now. Perhaps it’s because only Valerie Jarret and Michelle are left of his Chicago crew.
I don’t know how well I would do in his situation right now, but I think you have to force your self to first acknowledge it is serious not something to be treated as an inconvenience. He has failed to cultivate close and trusted advisors on many things.
Much as I love random juxtapositions of words, I have to say Solway strikes me, with a mind unsullied by psychological training, as borderline psychotic, or maybe a borderline psychotic wannabe.
Re Obama himself, I think the explanation is much simpler: he’s a not excessively bright spokesmodel, the political equivalent of The Monkees, i.e., a manufactured product of the marketers’ art. He is to politics as Jenny McCarthy is to vaccine policy: a cognitively disenfranchised mouthpiece parroting the thoughts of others.
I suspect that Obama vacillates and wobbles inconsistently in part because his handlers differ in their own views (“Intellectuals should be the vanguard of the proletariat!” “No, the peasants must lead!”) and he reflects whatever he was told most recently. He reverses himself like a White House press secretary because, in essence, he suffers from the same problem: he’s not the decision maker, just the spokesman.
I’m looking forward to reading Jack Cashill’s Deconstructing Obama. I note that some reviewers–who, for the most part, have not read the book–calumniate Cashill’s scholarship (or, more particularly, his views on other controversies), but his thesis that the style alone of Dreams from My Father suggests that Ayers wrote the supposed autobiography seems quite persuasive. (I own that I thought from the start that your president is a con-artist and not a particularly bright one, so I concede a tendency towards confirmation bias.)
I note also that the vast majority of the media, even the Republican and libertarian parts, are ignoring Deconstructing Obama.
Though such vacillation and indecisiveness are not uncommon among autocrats, this struck a chord with me. Aha! Eugene Newton Anderson, The First Moroccan Crisis 1904-1906 (Archon Books, 1966):
He’s like Nicholas II; no wonder he likes czars!
Oops: “His imagination, which could be vivid at times…”.
Quite enjoyed Solway’s presumptuous essay. Why presumptuous? Because the essay is really about Solway. I don’t think he is a psychotic wanna be as much as the essay lacks a center–other than Solway or his own creations–which would give him some gravity.
Paradoxically, it is the lack of gravity that is enjoyable: the “random juxtapositions of words” and a wit nearly as quick as Robin Williams before “Birdcage.”
Solway so nicely defines and illustrates the problem but offers no solution. Perhaps I’m asking too much, but there’s enough here to make me definitely want to check out “Hear, O Israel!” (More presumption in that cheeky title.)
Perhaps there will be something more solid, more “chabod.” Perhaps there will be something to address the fear that our nation might succumb to the “shrewd and polymorphic manipulator who may twice befuddle susceptible American voters.”
Fear begats obsession and, sometimes, psychosis. Perhaps Solway’s writings are a constructive working out of a psychosis. He is, after all, an artist. I plump for a second look.
The Solway style of writing reminded me of Iowahawk. As for psychotic writing, try D.H. Lawrence.
his thesis that the style alone of Dreams from My Father suggests that Ayers wrote the supposed autobiography seems quite persuasive
Without any knowledge of either book, I think the bare facts alone militate against Obama’s authorship of Dreams. Here’s a man who, while in an impecuniary state, had to return a $100,000 book advance (!) when he couldn’t actually produce a book.
Subsequently he turns out what I understand is a polished, lyrical text, this from who has never published anything else (apart from the books in question, i.e., nothing of known authorship), a man who in extemporaneous speech struggles to order a cheeseburger, confuses “inhalers” with “breathalyzers,” and stumbles over middle school vocabulary items such as “corpsman.”
I would presume that verbal facility would normally manifest itself in both speech and writing. (A pathologically shy person might conceivably write but not speak well, but Obama’s isn’t shy.)
For these reasons my antennae twitch a bit about the authorship of Obama’s books.
Just once I’d like one of these former Obama lovers to admit that those of us who didn’t buy into the hype were right, that we weren’t haters, racists, etc. Would it be so hard?
I doubt Obama wrote Audacity of Hope & Dreams of My Father all on his lonesome. However, its not unusual for a public figure to have plenty of assistance when writing an autobiography. What I think is ‘interesting’ is the audacity of Obama. Dreams was published right before his campaign for the Illinois senate. He was 35 years old at the time, a bit early for an autobiography is it not?
I get those all the time.
BHO may be cut from the same cloth as Qaddafi. Self-aggrandizing, completely self-centered lying liars who enjoy the power of oppression. Revel in it.
Libby says, “Would it be so hard?”
Yes. Liberals worship at the altar of self-esteem; the granting of something which has not been earned. They see the hard work of earning the respect of others as a vast right wing conspiracy.
This is an essential difference between Liberals and Conservatives: cult of personality. How many times was I asked “why could I support Iraq and Afghanistan since Bush was such a moron?”
My answer: Bush may be a moron (though I don’t think he is), but Iraq/Afghanistan wars were the right thing to do.
*blank stare*
Lefties need to walk 10 paces behind an enlightened (in their mind) leader in order to feel ‘right.’ Like an alcoholic having that first drink of the day.
This is an essential difference between Liberals and Conservatives: cult of personality.
This is true, and utterly inexplicable (to me, at least), but I suspect bespeaks a deep-seated pathology.
We laugh at North Korea’s ridiculous claims about Kim Il Sung and now Kim Jong Il. Fewer people laughed about Mao Tse-tung’s swim in the Yangtze River (aside: would you swim in something the Chinese call the “Yellow River?” Not me!), where the published reports had him in an hour swimming between two towns that were (IIRC) something like 30 miles apart (no report if he was pulling any water skiers).
But the liberal press was gushing about how brilliant “Barry” was, and how Michelle was the “most beautiful woman in the world.” (Whom did they ask? Stevie Wonder?)
Why liberals/ leftists feel this need to deify their leaders – which is unique to them – utterly baffles me.
Libby.
Darn near impossible. The libs’ view of the little president man and the dems and progressive causes in general is grounded in the desire to make themselves look good to themselves and, presumably, to others.
Others who do not think they look good are a vile group, a threat to looking good to themselves.
I mean, suppose you were walking about preening yourself about your moral wonderfulness and somebody quotes, say, Al Gore, to the point that corn-based ethanol saves no energy but was a good idea because he was “fond” of various farmers in anticipation of an upcoming caucus and it was all about the subsidies. How would you feel?
Either like a duped loser or you get defensive and refuse to admit it. Not to mention refuse to withdraw the vile accusations about the conservatives.
just think… one on either side of the US and all electronic devices from ny to Mississippi, and from california to kansas…
over his head? heck, his friends are not friends, and he is not competent (but may think he is) and they know they may not get another chance in 100 years after this…
worst part… the other side wrote our leaders playbook and he is using an old version which one can recognize from the 30s and before (where one could pretend that other states were too far away to matter)…
I agree wholeheartedly with Jack Cahill’s analysis of “Dreams”. After I read his essays, I was absolutely certain, no doubts whatsoever, that if Ayers didn’t ghost write the book, his influence in its writing was so significant that not giving him partital credit for authorship was dishonest.
I can’t remember now if those essays came first or Obama’s denial that he wasn’t aware of Jeremiah Wright’s racist, anti-semitic, America-hating sermons and remarks. But I remember it was those two things — claiming sole authorship of “Dreams” and lying about Wright — that made it clear to me he is a fundamentally dishonest man.
as Arbatov reflected, since the Soviet Union as a military superpower had collapsed and the threat of Soviet Communism was discarded in the so-called dustbin of history, the spoiled children and beneficiaries of the West’s longest and strongest economic expansion and technological achievements, unparalleled in history, would set forth to do what the Soviet Union could not do – to advance the aim of Communism to wreck liberal capitalism from the inside.
from the article that solway quotes and links to…
and the text that preceeds that quote is even more biting than the punch of that quote
Just ponder how a third-rate community organizer – from the most incestuously corrupt political region in the U.S.; with a record of participation in the most vulgar gathering of Jeremiah Wright posing as a reverend, spouting Fanonian rhetoric and bigotry; with mentors such as the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers; channelling the teachings of Saul Alinsky and Rashid Khalidi of the Chomsky school of self-loathing and sophistry – could advance through the ranks of American politics at an astounding speed, with little or no record of experience in government, to become the 44th president. In one of my columns from 2008 for the Sun Media in Canada, I had written in disbelief, as I watched the primaries unfold, of how American voters could be so beguiled by a charlatan of the Harold Hill type from The Music Man and vote for Obama.
once this discipline was removed it would lead to a bacchanalia in the West, the near instant raising of the slogan “end of history” even as the dust from the tearing down of the Berlin Wall had not settled, and this lack of discipline combined with the “flower children” of the sixties coming of age and grasping for power, would bring about a situation, Arbatov imagined, that would do more damage than the old men of the Communist plutocracy could ever deliver without committing suicide of their own.
and ends with
how sad are the losses and tears that have piled up – with more to come. They could have been avoided if we, as a people, were not so irresponsible or unfaithful to our history as to place at the head of our societies leaders so unworthy and clueless as the one who so unfittingly occupies the seat of Washington and Lincoln, at the head of this great republic.
pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-letter-from-a-fearfully-concerned-muslim/2/
I have to disagree with you there, Art. That November 8 incident off the coast of California was absolutely, positively an airplane.
Los Angeles Missile Contrail Explained in Pictures
I don’t know where your quote was from, but it had nothing to do with the cruise ship, which suffered an engine failure.
It’s exceedingly difficult to remove the scales from the eyes of a true believer.
Given the way an EMP’s strength would dimish by distance according to the inverse square law, I fail to see how non nuclear based EMPs could affect a half a continent wide area.
I too read Cashill’s original articles (and have ordered his book, but it hasn’t arrived yet), and found myself persuaded of his thesis.
The thing is, it really isn’t shocking that an ambitious pol. would have a ghost writer, and it only makes sense in Obama’s case that it would be Ayers. Who the heck else would it be? Even skeptics might concede the hypothetical: IF Obama had a ghost writer for Dreams, it was probably Bill Ayers.
The only reason it’s a scandal is because Obama has been laminated by the intelligentsia as the quintessence of sui generis genius. And Obama compounds the scandalousness by believing every word of it. He’s Reagan? Sure. Kennedy? Fine. FDR? Clearly. Lincoln? Maybe even a little superior. He’s even “LeBron, baby.”
I wonder if on some level Obama is such a narcissist that he actually believes he wrote Dreams. Sort of like Cartman in the “Fishsticks” episode of South Park.
The audacity of hope, indeed.
The thing is, it really isn’t shocking that an ambitious pol. would have a ghost writer, and it only makes sense in Obama’s case that it would be Ayers.
Exactly. No one over the age of six thinks Hillary actually wrote It Takes A Village. It’s even money whether she’s even ever read it.
So the real issue isn’t whether Dreams was ghost-written, but rather, by whom. And Obama’s (or more likely, the Party’s) choice to speak in his voice was apparently a communist terrorist. If that should in fact be the case, it speaks volumes.
I don’t know where your quote was from
the article that neo linked to….
duh…
as far as the emp, it depends on whether your talking its from a small device..
or its a big attack, and they use a large device… (and one does NOT need a rocket, a weather balloon is enough).
John Baker, read about Starfish Prime…
In July 1962, a 1.44 megaton (6.0 PJ) United States nuclear test in space, 400 kilometres (250 mi) above the mid-Pacific Ocean
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
(31 kilometers) southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll
Johnston Atoll is a 1.03-square-mile (2.7 km2) atoll in the North Pacific Ocean[1] about 1,400 km (750 nmi) west of Hawaii.
Starfish Prime also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link
washington to kentucky is about 530 miles…
no?
The EMP damage of the Starfish Prime test was quickly repaired because of the ruggedness (compared to today)[9] of the electrical and electronic infrastructure of Hawaii in 1962. Realization of the potential impacts of EMP became more apparent to some scientists and engineers during the 1970s as more sensitive solid-state electronics began to come into widespread use
from wiki
The relatively small magnitude of the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii (about 5600 volts/metre) and the relatively small amount of damage done (for example, only 1 to 3 percent of streetlights extinguished)[10] led some scientists to believe, in the early days of EMP research, that the problem might not be as significant as was later realized. Newer calculations[9] showed that if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kilovolts/metre) because of the greater strength of the Earth’s magnetic field over the United States, as well as the different orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field at high latitudes.
These new calculations, combined with the accelerating reliance on EMP-sensitive microelectronics, heightened awareness that the EMP threat could be a very significant problem.
the soviets did the The K Project…
Although the weapons used in the K Project were much smaller (up to 300 kilotons) than the United States Starfish Prime test of 1962, since the K Project tests were done over a populated large land mass (and also at a location where the Earth’s magnetic field was greater), the damage caused by the resulting EMP was much greater. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the level of this damage was communicated informally to scientists in the United States
notice that they tested things on their own people…
some info here too
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html
the first test was 11 kilotons
the last was 300 kilotons..
It was Test 184 that caused most of the problems with the civilian infrastructure in Kazakhstan.
if those countries felt like doing it, or werent fighting at the time, etc..
enough EMP info?
so a fire in the electrical system that wold burn out motors and such… like on the ship is what you would find…
they lie for a lot less than this kind of thing…
The EMP from Test 184 also damaged radios at about 600 kilometers (360 miles) from the detonation and knocked out a radar about 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from the nuclear explosion.
Unlike the U.S. high-altitude tests, there were scientists and engineers scattered across the affected area of the high-altitude test over Kazakhstan with equipment for measuring the EMP, and who apparently knew roughly what field strengths to expect. The Greetsai paper, mentioned earlier, states, “In 1962, the then Soviet Union conducted several high-altitude nuclear tests of great yield in Kazakhstan in the course of which were obtained vast facts on the damage levels from HEMP illuminating both military and civil systems.”
so they know a lot more than we do about this…
the problem, if you care… is that these pulses are very very short..
so there are examples of one amp fuses letting 5000 amps through.. and 5000 amps on other things even if way to short to melt a fuse, will do a lot of damage in today’s electronics.
oh… ALL these tests (and others in other areas) were all done right before this date…
Sputnik 25 was launched on January 4, 1963
in the two years before that date, there were lots of tests… (we forget this when we look back and like to say we were foolish for being scared)
06 September 1961
06 October 1961
27 October 1961
27 October 1961 [yes TWO in one day]
22 October 1962
28 October 1962
1 November 1962
the US did a lot too
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Worldwide_nuclear_testing.svg
and if you look the year of the sputnik, russia did how many?
There are at least two ways of awakening that I’m familiar with.
There’s the gradual warm rise to consciousness that precedes my favorite Sunday mornings.
Then there are the time I jerk awake in a cold sweat wondering if my children are okay while I make sure my wife is still breathing.
I think Solway has experienced the second sort.
Bernard @4:33
You said it.
In his book, Cashill goes far beyond a stylistic analysis of “Dreams.” He’s got interesting anecdotes (Backyard Conservative’s not-to-be-missed encounter with Bill Ayers), statistical analysis, and ruminations on whether BHO’s unnamed love interest was an updated version of Bill Ayers’ true love, the deplorable Diane Oughton. Neo even gets mentioned. Interesting discussion of Obama’s paternity, too.
Not to be missed, though, in any study of “Dreams” is Steve Sailer’s excellent “America’s Half Blood Prince” (available at his website). Sailer wrote the book several years ago and didn’t question Obama’s authorship, but he does provide very important background and context. He also has a very interesting blog ( http://isteve.blogspot.com/ ), where he has commented favorably on Cashill’s efforts.
Artfldgr,
There are many (plausible) scenarios involving a wide range of methods or combination of methods that could be used to bring the USA (or any other 1st world nation) to its knees. I’m not disputing that an EMP attack is a real threat; civilization has always been a fragile structure. In the digital-macroeconomic age it is more fragile than ever before.
IMO, the simplest method to achieve our destruction is to assist us (or Eurolandia) in constructing our own demise. We are well on our way to doing exactly that. Right now, at this moment, the most dangerous enemy is not China, the jihadi boys, or fill in the blank.
The greatest threat resides within: our fellow myopic citizens who vote for free pie in the sky, the MSM, local-state-federal governments, and the federal reserve (to name a few of the culprits). We need to remind our fellow citizens that no one has held a gun to our collective head and demanded we borrow and print our way into uncounted trillions of dollars of unsustainable debt. Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Diane Oughton
Ah, yes, Diane “Boom Boom” Oughton.
Thank God she was incompetent.
I’ve been thinking about Obama’s incompetence and traitorous nature all day. Bill Whittle’s video linked above is worth watching.
Three things I’ve been thinking about:
1. What role have the Saudis played in taking over our government and mass media? This problem was raised in a book by Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, on Saudi bribery of American officials. I agree that liberalism is a type of mental disease, but why is the MSM so totally dominated by anti-American idiots?
2. If Libya breaks up, it will become another series of failed states, meaning that anyone can move into the area.
3. Since the current U.S. government is not looking out for U.S. interests, are there any military people who are willing to take over if we come under attack? Our enemies should be worried that they would be in even more danger if rogue military people took U.S. defense. I simply can’t believe that all nukes and other weapons are under the total control of Obama. Surely some American military people have prepared for taking steps that seem necessary.
I’m not being specific above in #3 because too many scenarios are running through my head. What I’m trying to say is that I HOPE that there are still adults in our government, not just self-serving bureaucrats of the Colin Powell type.
BTW, I believe that Hillary Clinton has no skills whatsoever so we don’t have a Secretary of State. And we don’t have a President. We’re a ship without a captain right now.
I sincerely hope so.
Obama is Allende and it is time for a Pinochet.
rickli,
Obama fits the Allende mold, no argument there. But I don’t want a Pinochet. I want a president who intuitively understands why the founders put the 9th & 10th amendments in the Bill of Rights.
“Government is like fire. It is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.”
Art, are not all your references to nuclear produced EMPs? I have long been aware of the danger of nuclear based EMPs. But your reference to possible Chinese test off the west coast recently seemed to imply something capable of generating EMPs without the use of nukes. Hence my original comment concerning “non nuclear based EMP” .
“Just once I’d like one of these former Obama lovers to admit that those of us who didn’t buy into the hype were right, that we weren’t haters, racists, etc. Would it be so hard?”
Libby
Liberals see reality itself as a form of injustice that must not be yielded to. The very foundational premise of the world, that lifeforms have to consume other lifeforms for survival, is an offensive concept that should never be accepted by caring people.
They hate the insensitivity of conservatism that accepts the world as it is. Especially when delusional thinkng is right there at our disposal to remedy the situation by carrying a rebellious chip on our shoulder for the world.
Parker:
Why do you not want a Pinochet? Please elaborate.
The anti-Allendes didn’t have a large number of choices. I am more impressed by the Chilean outcome than by any negatives in the process of ousting Allende.
I’m tired of Canadians telling us how to do it right.
“exhibited such fawning admiration for Obama, which persists for many in the absence of any evidence to support it”
Definition of a cult.
As a poet he left out the most likely Obama literary avatar: Nehemiah Scudder.
Parker
the problem with your idea is that it dont work, its not right.
the idea is not to make it fall arbitrarily… any idiot can cut a tree down like that… and no one would deny that, and thats what your alluding to.
but what they want is to knock the tree down so that it goes between two buildings and falls into their truck..
they dont want it to fall
they want it to fall into their hands..
got the difference?
so they have to time the fall and preserve the resources, or else the prize gets destroyed in the game (like last century, they learned from)
you realize that also, they dont want our problems when it falls. we got rats nests all over.
so, such a thing would also get the worst and least productive to off each other…
most people suck at strategy, as our school system has stunted their ability to extrapolate.
they replace calculation with opinion and believe they are the same.
if so, then i would not be right so much and so steady for so long… would i?
way back before obama was elected i said that if we didnt finish the job of the one country lnie in the sand, that every burner was going to be turned on, the kitchen was going to be made real hot.
once i saw who was going to lead, i realized that it was all designed to put an incompetent in place.
one who would panic and grab the wheel, and cheat out merit..
in this way, the right people cant rise up,as they did last century and otherwise.
i laid this path out over 3 years ago.
its been converging as i said, with the things i said, like food, oil, and so forth…
LAST Thing they want is to allow us to elect a competent person and then lose the advantage gained without any gain.
jon baker
your correct.. there ARE smaller weapons that are not nuclear that make emp… (not enough room here to discuss)…
but the point is what can be done, and to what degree it would do its thing.
want to take out local ships and such in a small area, you use what the Chinese did. or a tactical nuke (very small, hard to distinguish from things like daisy cutters).
we do NOT know how their EMP is made.
given where they were, and so forth, they could have used a small tactical nuke, and how would we know?
but as i said, there are other ways, and thats probable.
but again. if your target is a small group, or many, you use a hand gun… when your target is large and broad, you use a machine gun.
the point i was addressing is that EMP does not follow the same energy curve of a magnetic field (diminish at the CUBE, not SQUARE like light). (mostly because its not in space… so all one has to do is realize that the wave will follow the surface fields not spread out evenly like light which is unaffected by magnetic fields)
the bigger point is that it doesn’t take much…
a very low yield weapon, would be VERY destructive to our society. and since the progressives erased our past like housecats dont know the jungle.
we will find it VERY hard if not impossible to function, as the brits did during the blitz.
or Americans in the past. we USED to be full educated people with broad skills, we were clerkified by soviet style schooling (Dewey copied) and so CANT function too much outside a very narrow domain (which made our workers cheaper, but since manufacturing wasnt perpetual, most are trained for a future that never happend – and since they are not broadly educated, they cant retrain)
a small nuclear weapon, and MAYBE a large non nuclear emp device, could do TONS of damage.
our electronic equipment today… is NOT able to take even a tiny bit of it…
oh…
and i would take a look at the new soviet tanks and other equipment you think is old.
the new tanks, unlike ours, are always nuclear ready and equiped. go take a look.
ours are not, and in many cases we havent even made the equipment (like the humvee armor).
and the backwards equipment? not backwards.. its old type non computer engines…
they will run when everything else stops…
remember, the military is laid out to compliment their tactical methods…
so, 1940s trucks, and stuff, as they found out in hawaii, worked fine after the event.
modern failed.
the fact that they have been reorganizing their military, cutting out the waste and generals without skills, moving those experienced last century in place.
what would that tell you they are preparing for?
go look it up
ALSO, they have a different set of rules and so you have to apply their rules to work out what they can do, and not our rules.
for instance… their miltiary is no longer the 5 million strong it was in soviet times… but now is 1 million.
others would say that is evidence of some point they wish to assert that its shows they are not ready.
however, one would ALSO have to know what they CAN do, and HAVE done… and their system would allow them to conscript 10 million if they wanted to tomorrow.
we would say they arent trained, etc..
they would say so what?
if you dont get it, you wont get why thats the answer!!!
we train so well because we value life
they dont, because they dont care, and do not want people with their morals AND training wandering around… when not employed they cause problems WAY out of their proportion.
this is why in the past i pointed out groups like Vympel.
Vympels job is to man machine guns behind your lines, so when the untrained conscripts turn to run, you cut them down.
they have no choice but to fight and win if they want to live.
read about zukov and how he won and neutralized the equiped nazis… they could not use their equipment because zukovs men were in with them going at it hand to hand. (so the islamic tactic is a soviet tactic, funny how they are also teamed up and trained by them).
you cant bomb the enemy and use yoru fancy equipment if they are standing next to you.
the fact that they ahve been rebuliding and upgrading all their nuclear shelters like yamentau is also scary.
yamentau is a base they upgraded (while we took ours out of service), and did so using the money we sent them!!!!
its a nuclear shelter larger than the washington beltway… (look at the washington beltway!!!)
I’ll grant that in Allende’s Chile Pinochet’s coup d’etat may have been the only alternative. I’ll also agree that Chile today stands out as an example of stability in SA. By SA standards it is certainly a free and prosperous country, and they produce great wines which is a real plus. However, I prefer to avoid a coup d’etat in the USA. The ballot box is the way, not tanks in the streets.
Art, all your talk of EMPs and I might have to go buy more ammo. After all, my guns don’t have computer chips in them. 🙂
Artfldgr:
Military: Hi, guys!
Encirclement of Enemy: Hiya!
Approach by Stealth: Yo!
Military: You sure do look mighty fine, today. We’ve had some real successes lately, and I gotta say, you’re both so wonderful, and such effective contributors. Anyway, I have to go; I can see Blockading and Ambushing over yonder, and I need to tell them how great they are. Bye.
jon baker,
There is no such thing as too much ammo. Brass, primers, and powder will only get more expensive as we type….. buy now. Properly stored ammo is a good investment. 😉
E.M. Crotchet
I prefer this…
“All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us…they can’t get away this time.”
“Great. Now we can shoot at those bastards from every direction.”
“Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!”
“You don’t hurt ’em if you don’t hit ’em.”
“We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.” – November 1950, during Chosin Reservoir campaign
Chesty Puller… 🙂
[before you comment, i would suggest looking up and reading about Chosin]
Perhaps, Artfldgr, I should suggest looking up and reading about how complement differs from compliment–the point I was trying to make humorously, though clearly unsuccessfully, in my little dialogue.
🙂
Glad i didn’t type condiment…
nothing i could type would be worse than a commander in chief saying corpse for corps
For me a psychological necessity of leftists to leader worship is quite understandable. Utopian worldview is rationalisation of eschatological myth, which always is lurking in collective subconscience. It is centered on concept of Redeemer, Messiah, Mahdi: when projected onto political plane, this figure becomes Dear Leader, with magic, supernatural powers ascribed to him.
From perspective of future historians, the 20th century will be described as a period of revival of eschatological heresies: Communism, Nazism, Socialism, Fascism, Nasserism, militant Islamism. In their deep mythological structure, all these leftist political philosophies are essentially the same.
Sergey…
you are revering to the common practice in paganism and animism, of drawing into.
ie. read texts like “drawing down the moon”
in this, the priestes or priest who leads the people, is supposed to draw down into themselves the god head.
its one step removed from caligula or ceaser declaring themselves as gods..
but less removed from the concepts of devine right of kings, in which the god assists their position.
three distances…
farthest is divine right
next is drawing down
and closest is they are a god
if one is to consider post enlightenment chirstian thought, then its even farther, as the person leading is just another person, equal in the eyes of god to all other man, and so is humbled to his position by no devine right, but by MERIT.
ergo we HAD a meritocracy…
now we have an Aristocracy again…
which tends to be made up of sociopaths cargo cult types, who cheat to maintain position.
its not to hard to see that the first three forms are perfect for them depending on what the people allow them to get away with.
revering supposed to be referring.. sorry
the 20th century will be described as a period of…
the domination of man by schema(tic) ISM’s…
the age of ism… (nice book title)
maybe a poem there in the old tradition no one would read..
beware the land of ism my child
do not visit, do not deal with the land across the glen
for fear for fear for fear of administrative men
beware the land of ism my child
do not learn their ways
for night is day, and day is night, and the future is where you have been
for fear for fear for fear of administrative men
beware the land of ism my child
its a dark and gloomy place where sadness reigns as happiness, and its moral to live in sin
for fear for fear for fear of administrative men
anyone want to finish it or polish it go ahead
i can knock em out all day… pick your pentameter too! i am too quick, to others that makes me sick, but i talk as always in iambic… 🙂
the poem is loosely based on another one..
i forgot that i should credit the source since people here like to sometimes follow threads.
The Fairies — William Allingham
and particularly this part…
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
i can recite it from heart, as with ode to a Grecian urn, and lots more..
one of my FAVS to feminism is “”To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick”
heh heh 🙂
the painting by John William Waterhouse is good too…
read this, and no wonder they have to erase prior culture… we might actually LEARN..
and the rest of faires..