Re: Coming Trends: Fading Extropy?

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 17:45:56 MDT


--- spike66 <spike66@attbi.com> wrote:
> Greg Burch wrote:
>
> >>We are hyperventilating, preparing for the
> >>next charge. This next one will be even more exhilarating
> >>than the last one.
> >
> > Reminds me of the bumper sticker we used to see in Houston during
> > the energy depression of the 1980s: "God, please give me another
oil
> > shortage -- and this time I promise I won't blow it!" I hope next
> > time I have the sense to spot the top of the market . . .Greg Burch
>
> Heres one for my office wall: "Russia, please give us
> another cold war -- we promise we wont blow it this time."
>
> There may be those who would not see the humor in that. spike

Quite. The problem in actuality is that it is our own leadership which
no longer has the intestinal fortitude to engage a cold war. It takes
two to tango, and it was we who chose to refuse to trade with the
Warsaw Pact as the lines were demarcated so eloquently by Churchill in
his Iron Curtain speech, and emphasized with such force with Stalin's
jumping so quickly into the nuclear game, as well as the crushing of
the Prague Spring. We could have easily announced a policy of
'engagement' in 1947, claiming that by trading with the enemy we would
transform the enemy into a friend. We didn't, and in the end, those who
chose the course of Cold War were vindicated by those freed from
tyranny, despite the cost and duration of the conflict.

The Cold War existed because our leaders saw the world in such an us or
them degree of contrast, much as Bush is trying to do with little
success amongst the Democrats and the socialist controlled europeans
with respect to radical islam. Unfortunately, the radical muslims are
not cooperating with appropriate quantities of humanist-offending
atrocities, at least not in range of tv cameras owned by networks
willing to broadcast such with liberal viewers willing to recognise the
threat as such. The current attack in Bali helps a little, but what is
really needed, in actuality, is for the baddies to set off a suitcase
nuke, or for Saddam to launch an NBC attack on Israel.

The left never wants to take necessary actions until repeatedly smacked
in the nose with the fact that their cozy assumptions about the rest of
the world are based on pure socialist/postmodernist horse puckey. Just
as most male youth support for leftism is primarily a strategy for
getting laid, most male youth support for pacifism is primarily a
strategy for personal risk avoidance. Rather than being adults and
declaring CO status and getting drafted as a combat medic, they would
prefer to stay in college as long as possible or move to a neutral
country, whatever works for the times. Today, with no draft in sight,
college students are not even at risk of being drafted, and are now
left making guilty excuses for moral cowardice.

The Low Intensity Conflict practiced by al Qaeda does not engender the
intensity of reaction from those who would rather be in their dorm
rooms zapping mutants on their X-Boxes rather than overseas zapping
real bad guys (given the similarity of the sim with real combat, the
only difference being real risk to the players corporal body in
reality, one wonders at their reticence).

Note that military recruitment has not risen in response to 9/11, in
contrast to the rise in enlistments that occured during Gulf War I. A
professor at Dartmouth College quizzed his students as to why they were
not enlisting to defend their country, to a rather negative and
lackluster response. Where in the days of the "good wars", large
fractions of college classes would drop out to enlist in the service
within days of outbreak of hostilities, not one student at this
hallowed hall of democratic liberalism has enlisted to make the world
safe for decadent western liberalism.

If you are neutralizing mutants in your video games, you really don't
have the testosterone left over to get all pumped up enough about al
Qaeda to go marching down to the military recruiter.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:34 MST