On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:18:15 -0700, eatfastnoodle
wrote:


The kind of the attitude reminded me of a Survivor episode from the
“social experiment" season (in actuality, they just set up 4 different
tribes: Asian, White, Hispanic and Black), the eventual winner, a
Korean guy, tried to recruit one member of a former White tribe by
blackmailing him using immunity idol (there were two groups, one was
made up of former white tribe members, another was made up of remnants
of former Asian and Hispanic tribes, the white has the numbers, so
they could vote out their biggest target: the Korean guy, in a clever
strategic move designed to keep his immunity idol for late use and
reverse their disadvantage in numbers, the Korean guy just told his
target for recruitment: since I got the immunity idol, when it came to
the actual vote, white group's number wouldn't hurt me, and according
to the rule, if the person who got the most vote had immunity idol,
the person who got the second most vote would go home, which would be
you since I would tell my group to vote for you in unanimity.) Not
sure what he should do, the white guy returned to his group and tried
to hint to his group about the situation by telling them: Yes, he is
the biggest threat, but WHAT IF he has the immunity idol, what should
we do? The other three just told him: no, he has no idol, he again
tried to hint them: but we don't know, WHAT IF.... for multiple times,
his tribe mates just refused to even consider the possibility,
disappointed, that guy decided to jump to the other side, end of
story.

Interesting. I've worked hard to avoid watching that program. I never did
like most television anyway. Most people don't do a very good job of
gaming their situations and that situation you describe is a good example
of it. Our schools don't teach people to assess their situations and deal
with tradeoffs and the result is that we wind up with a population that
mostly can't do that.


This administration and certain ids on this group are exactly like
these three "tribe mates". Every time you tell them Iraq is costing
America trillions of dollars, causing the dollar to tank, causing all
kinds of economic ills, they will just look at you blankly and repeat
the same line: but we are killing terrorists, it's better to kill them
there than waiting for the mushroom cloud here. They have a laser like
fixation on what this administration tell them to the exclusion of
everything else. They will talk about security, security, security for
a whole year without giving a thought to how to pay for the security,
what will be the negative effect on the economy and how it would
impact constitutionally guaranteed freedom this country is founded
upon. I simply can't understand the mindset. Maybe that's why George
Bush was elected twice, because he has zero doubt about the absolute
correctness of his actions. Maybe lack of consideration for
alternative course actions has become the most important quality
people look for. I dunno.

I agree. They can't examine tradeoffs and the guys who can are getting
into their 80's now. I kinda suspect that Bush's getting into Afghanistan
was more about Hussein's attempt to have his father assassinated after he
left office than it ever was about anything else. And the funny thing was
that Iraq was our defacto ally until April Glaspie set Hussein for a fall.

The people who are fixated on Iraq tend to forget that we propped Hussein
up and quietly supported him in his war against the Iranians as an attempt
to contain the Islamic Revolution-- something that was, until Bush's
father screwed it up, fairly successful as a policy.

Now we've blown our own containment policy, you've got the Mullahs making
a breakout, China's got strong allies on the Persian Gulf and in the
meantime, Bush II is, as always, more about vindicating the regime of his
father, than he is about actually governing this country with an eye
towards it's future. He's literally taking this country and running it
into the ground, and he's not gonna be here when it hits the wall with the
bang that it will either. His family's bought a ninety five thousand acres
of Gran Chaco in Paraguay and that's where he's gonna retire.

I suspect that Paraguay was a second choice too. He had his recently
married daughter, Jenna, down in Buenos Aries playing the debutante and
acting as her father's proxy. My guess is that the Ausdeutche in
Argentina's Lakes District told him that they didn't want him as a
neighbor. Those folks like it quiet and he would have brought a traveling
circus, complete with freakshow with him, so it's off to Gran Chaco he
goes. Kinda sad, Gran Chaco was a kinda nice place.

The saddest thing of all, however, is that no matter who wins the
election, incompetents will rule, and the only new constant we can count
on, is that it'll get far worse long before it gets any better-- if it
ever does.

The writing was on the wall when Hutchisson-Wampoa got control of the
Panama Canal, but the current bunch of decision makers think in terms of
video games, the preceeding bunch thought in terms of Poker, and the old
guys like Schlesinger were mostly Chess Players. And most of em have never
heard of Weiqi, let alone learned how to play it, even though most
cultural constants at conflict resolution resemble the games that people
play-- and the Chinese play Weiqi, (or as the Japanese call it, Go.)

Industrially, we're in decline, logistically, we're broken and
strategically we're hopeless. The whole thing is starting to resemble a
******* cross between the worst aspects of the Austro-Hungarians crossed
with the Ottomans, and that's not something to aspire to, especially since
most of our policy can be best described as Imperial Overreach.

I pity the kids who are Field Grade officers now and who'll be General
Officers in another ten years, because they're inheriting the most screwed
up security picture since John Cantacuzene was Emperor of the Byzantine
Empire-- one which quickly shrunk to the city limits of Constantinople.

History happens, and it's getting set to happen to us and when it does,
it's gonna land with a bang.



--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.