On the death of idealism

[Gadianton]

Ehh, I'm still not so sure. Reading about what the insurrectionists on trial have had to say, they seem pretty willing to wash their past behaviors away in a flood of gosh-I'm-so-sorry tears. In short, I'm not seeing many "Give me liberty or give me death" types. (Maybe Steve Bannon is one--I don't know.)

If it really came down to it, I kind of doubt your friend really would have been willing to stand before a firing squad and take a bullet for Donald and God.

The Q guy I mentioned certainly isn't my friend. Would he take a bullet for his beliefs? I'm not so sure he wouldn't. Not because his faith is so strong, but I think that guys like him feel displaced, and don't have much to live for. H mentioned elsewhere that he thinks decline in traditional religiosity has some negative effects, and I strongly agree with that. That guy never struck me as a strong Christian so much as a "Christ and country" believer; he's ex-special forces. "God and the flag". Hey, kind of like Trump himself. I think he's bored and tired of life and might be up for going down in a blaze.

I think Freedom is the over-arching ideal and it goes back a long time. In today's right-wing, it might be more of a talking point than a serious principle one commits to, and it might be loaded with hatred for the enemy, but I think it's too complex to worry about whether people are hypocrites or have a proper intellectual mastery of their terminology. There may be a whole lot else going on, but to me the banner is freedom. One of the good things about making that your trademark, is its something that everyone agrees with, including your enemy, but you get to deny the opposition any ownership and basically make yourself righteous by definition.

[Jersey Girl]

Good work. Reading what you've posted in the past, I would have been surprised to have learned you hadn't had such an experience. The field of education is full of landmines, especially for those idealists who insist on putting the intellectual and emotional welfare of the child first.


edit: (God, rereading that last sentence, I sound bitter.)

You don't sound bitter on the page. Maybe you feel bitter in your mind. As for me, I did the job I signed on to do and that includes maintaining professional ethics.

[Jersey Girl]

I may have too much emotion invested to talk about this. I'm not sure I'm making any sense. Taking a few days off.

Thank you everyone.

No, you can't do that. I hardly ever make sense. Doesn't stop me!

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I may have too much emotion invested to talk about this. I'm not sure I'm making any sense. Taking a few days off.

Thank you everyone.

Your new avatar moves me, and I’m not being facetious. Art is funny that way.

- Doc

[Moksha]

Ever wonder how a pack of vipers operates? Fox News sunk its fangs into Dick Cheney for stepping into the Capitol to support his daughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XZqwuJ-4TM


Fox News Up Close and with the cage door open
Talk about the slithering underbelly of idealism.

[huckelberry]

I may have too much emotion invested to talk about this. I'm not sure I'm making any sense. Taking a few days off.

Thank you everyone.

Your new avatar moves me, and I’m not being facetious. Art is funny that way.

- Doc

Prior to that painting the artist's color was much brighter and lighter. His color turned darker and darker from this . Wish Morley a place to take stock and resist deeper discouragement.

For the time we are in the painting is appropriately expressive for me as well.

Doc , today a thought or question, crossed my mind. I do not think the nation has had a previous time when a war smoldered on and on and on like the past years. Military people have had to redeploy over and over. I would think that produces long term strain. Do you think that has contributed toward the current instability of thought and feelings in our nation?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Do you think that has contributed toward the current instability of thought and feelings in our nation?

No, I don’t, outside of spending money on the military industrial complex instead on domestic programs that’d directly benefit people like UHC, real tuition assistance, and housing. Other than that, I believe the reasons are very complex. My guess is as good as anyone else’s, but off the top of my head:

- population pressures on consumerism, real estate, resource acquisition

- corporatism exasperating muti-sector economic pressures, such as but not limited to real estate pressure (see: BlackRock and similar corporate entities)

- the Internet accelerating the decline of traditional values and the promotion of degeneracy

- state actors like the Russian IRA, Israeli JDF, the CCP whateveritscalled successfully using the Internet to destabilize the West

- partisanship pushing extremism and disastrous policies

- the slow disappearance of the American middle class abetted by political actors and propagandists

- widespread addiction and its astronomical costs along with social ills

- the slow motion train wreck of our impact on the natural world creating a mass existential dread and resultant malaise

- escapism

I think that’s a pretty good list. Well. Actually it’s a horrific nightmare of a list.

I think this image pretty much sums it all up:



- Doc

[huckelberry]

Doc , I agree that is a good list. Thank you for putting it up. I certainly was not imagining that the length of war was a primary factor in what is going on, just wondering if it has made some sort of contribution. If you think not I bow to your closer contact .

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Doc , I agree that is a good list. Thank you for putting it up. I certainly was not imagining that the length of war was a primary factor in what is going on, just wondering if it has made some sort of contribution. If you think not I bow to your closer contact .

Well. I was just an enlisted guy. Your opinion is just as valid as mine.

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

It's hard to understand how the military might of the United States can have been unable to wrap up these seemingly little wars ... until you think about what kind of military force it would take to control a whole country completely. To do that you'd need something like 10 to 100 people per square kilometre, to watch the landscape 24/7 and keep the watchers supplied. The surface area of Iraq is nearly 440,000 square kilometres. So we'd be talking about an army of occupation numbering millions. You might as well be trying to cover the whole Iraqi population man-for-man.

Technology doesn't help with that as much as you'd like. To keep a fleet of drones in the air viewing the whole country 24/7 is going to take a few million drones, which all need operators and support.

Operations like that are probably about ten times larger than what even the United States armed forces could achieve if they gave their all. They must be at least a hundred times larger than what the United States has been prepared to invest in any operation since World War II.

Why is any war ever winnable with less investment than covering the whole enemy population man-for-man or watching every square meter of the landscape through a rifle sight 24/7? There can be many reasons but they have to be big reasons, because otherwise man-for-man coverage is the baseline cost of a victorious war. When you're assessing your odds of success you have to start from the premise and try to identify the powerful factors in your favour that will lower your costs by several orders of magnitude. Even for a military superpower victory is not the default.