We Are Already at War with Iran

One reason I will not vote for president this year is that I do not think there is much difference between the two candidates that have a chance of winning the election. 

I have three issues that I think are important. 

I wish we lived in a world where every country had appropriate labor and environmental laws. In such a world, I would support free trade. We do not live in that world. China pollutes the air and the water with little or no regulation. In such a world we need tariffs. Obamney supports free trade. 

We are spending our way into national bankruptcy. Tweddledeebama thinks that we can grow spending by 5% a year, Tweddledumney thinks we can grow spending at 4% a year. This is nuts. It will not happen. 

The final issue that concerns me is the coming war in Iran. While Romney appears to talk more bellicose than Obama, it really does not matter as we are already at war with Iran. 

All Things D had this to say on our war with Iran:

It is a big package of software that apparently offers an attacker something like a Swiss Army knife, because it can do a lot of things that might be called for. It can monitor a computer’s network traffic, including tracking which Web sites are visited, and log and copy email coming in and going out. It can turn on a computer’s internal microphone and record conversations in the room and presumably send audio files of those recorded conversations to someone who will listen to them. Ditto with a machine’s internal Web cam. It can record what characters are typed on the keyboard, thereby capturing sensitive information like passwords and other user credentials that can be used later. It can capture shots of what is being displayed on a computer’s screen.

Seen in the wild some weeks back, the Washington Post, citing Western intelligence officials, reported today that Flame was created by the combined efforts and resources of the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies. The story matches and fills in some details on reporting by the New York Times on the same subject.

Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians are three blind mice.In other words we have already fired the first shot at Iran in league with Israel. All Things D Continues:

First, if the U.S. views attacks in cyberspace the same as other attacks, then how is a country being attacked supposed to see that? If the U.S. reserves the right to respond to a cyber attack with an air strike, does that not mean that Iran can do the same thing? And if the U.S. is launching attacks, shouldn’t there be some overt public acknowledgement of that fact? Yes, I’ll grant, fighting with bits is preferable to fighting with bullets and bombs, but if it’s the Obama Administration’s position that fighting with one is legally equal to fighting with another, shouldn’t one be done as readily in the open as the other? Warfare requires a degree of public approval. Espionage doesn’t.

If the US does something that they look at as war if done to the US, isn't that war by the US' own definition? 

While Romney talks big, Obama has already started the war. Does it matter who is elected to finish the war? A vote for Obamney is a vote for war. 

Me, vote for war? To quote a fictional figure from Melville, not his famous whale but Bartleby, "I prefer not to." 

Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede

While in Branson, Missouri last month we decided to go to the Dixie Stampede. The Dixie Stampede is a dinner show where the audience is divided into two teams which represent the two sides in the Civil War. My family rooted for the South.

Our team was the best in the various equestrian events, as was only appropriate as our side, the glorious South, was better than the North. Barrel racing, chuck wagon racing, and a relay race were among the events. Our Southern children were much better than the incompetent Northern children in chicken herding—we won the gold medal! Our side’s pigs even won the pig racing contest, twice. “Our pigs were better than your pigs” was our exclamation.

The food was good, but a word of warning—they do not give you silverware, so take your own.

While they did the disappearing fake audience member magic trick, I started to think. Thinking is probably a mistake in such a venue.

As we pounded our feet as we cheered our side on, I was thinking about the obligatory American Indian tribute we had seen earlier. While the North and South had many disagreements, the North and South did agree on one thing. The Indians must be destroyed. We needed the land. I pounded my feet with a little less vigor.

As we cheered our pigs to victory, I began to think. Does it really matter which pig wins? I cheered a little softer.

Was it really appropriate to take a war that killed 600,000 people and turn it into chicken herding or a three- legged race? (Where did they get those uncoordinated Northerners?) I did not participate much in the shouting contest.

Toward the end we had the typical Branson patriotic number sung on video by Dolly Parton. It was the same tape I saw at a previous Stampede 10 years before. This was before Dolly had ruined her looks with botched plastic surgery. I wondered how much longer our national plastic surgery could go on? Our national plastic surgery, the elections, will probably fail and we will end up worse than before.

Yes, the Civil War was bad, but now we can join together as Americans! Hurrah. Instead of killing each other, now we can kill other people.

I stopped cheering.

Does it really matter which pig will win the race? Does it really matter which overlord we elect? Are we, Republicans and Democrats, and yes even Libertarians, cheering meaninglessly for our side? Even if our side naturally won, are we so vain to think it matters?

If you vote for the lesser of two evils, aren’t you being evil?

Even if “our” pig is better than your pig, does it really matter whose pig wins? 

The Art Of War

While this History Channel documentary suffers from perfect hindsight as it always examines the battles after the fact, it is an interesting examination of Sun Tsu's The Art of War. 

A Bug's Life

A different take on a Bug's life

A Brave New World

On reading a review copy of George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) Aldous Huxley, author of the 1931 book Brave New World, wrote some thoughts to Orwell about the themes in each of their books. 

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Both Orwell and Huxley were very pessimistic about the future, the world we all now live in. But they each had a quite different view of the future. 

The website where I got the letter Huxley wrote to Orwell said this about the two approaches:

This 1949 letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell is from Letters of Note. While these two authors shared a dystopic view, they disagreed on how it would be realized. Not to put too fine a point on it, Huxley feared the carrot while Orwell feared the stick. 

I lean toward Huxley’s view of the future more than Orwell’s, but see trends toward both in our current society. If you get in the way of today’s society, you will be crushed, like in Orwell’s 1984. However the whole society is structured to keep us dumb and happy, as it was in Huxley’s novel Brave New World. 

One major way this works is by advertising—eighteen minutes of each hour of TV. How much do we watch?

The Nielsen Co.’s “Three Screen Report”—referring to televisions, computers and cellphones—for the fourth quarter said the average American now watches more than 151 hours of TV a month. That’s about five hours a day and an all-time high, up 3.6% from the 145 or so hours Americans reportedly watched in the same period last year. 

The data here is from 2009, but I doubt it has changed much. I find the figure of 5 hours a day incredible. Even including Internet resources like some the documentaries I have been sharing on the blog, I doubt I watch 10 hours a week. And when I watch, there are few or no commercials. My wife and daughter watch more, but since we do not have cable or broadcast TV what we watch is largely commercial free. 

If the 5 hour a day average is right, that means 90 minutes of ads every day. That is 32,850 minutes of ads in a year. How can we not be programmed? Children are particularly susceptible:

And according to Wright Institute child psychologist Dr. Allen Kanner, by the time an American child is three, they can recognize an average of 100 brand logos. By age 10, they remember between 300 to 400 brands, according to a Nickelodeon study.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/brandwashed-tricks-brands-use-kids-martin-lindstrom-2011-9?op=1#ixzz224EwRCNs

I urge you…no, that is not strong enough—I beg you to consider the brave new world we have entered. Is it the world you want to live in? 

If not, there are some things you can do. How about a walk in the cool of the summer evening? The town I live in, Idyllwild, has free weekly concerts. No doubt your town has something like this. We watch local baseball games. You can go to the movies… er… um… never mind about that. Have a game night. 

When you do watch TV, and I still do have some “guilty pleasures,” ask the right question. Instead of “What is best on tonight?” ask instead, “Is there anything worth watching on tonight.” If you are still watching cable, be sure to get a DVR and fast forward though all the commercials. If you set your DVR and start watching the show 15 minutes late, you will reach the end about the same time that the program ends. 

Babylon the Great wants you passive, fat, in front of the TV in a semi-mindless state. Do not be that person. Show initiative. You must be in the world, but Jesus said his followers would not be of the world. As the Philips translation of Romans 12 tells us. “Do not let this world squeeze you into its mold.” 

Leave Hollywood the Great.