Category: observations

Billmon waxes erudite on the so-called “Disunited State of America.”

A House Divided:

Talk of disunion and civil war may seem like hyperbole. I’m sure it would certainly seem so to the vast majority of Americans who don’t think much about politics or culture and just want to get on with their lives. I’m sure most Spaniards felt the same way in the summer of 1936, just as most Americans did in the winter of 1860.

But the historical truth is that civil wars aren’t made by vast majorities, but by enraged and fearful minorities. Looking at America’s traditionalists and the modernists today, I see plenty of rage and fear, most, though hardly all, of it eminating from the authoritarian right. For now, these primal passions are still being contained within the boundaries of the conventional political process. But that process — essentially a system for brokering the demands of competing interest groups — isn’t designed to handle the stresses of a full-blown culture war.

Compared to most countries, America has been very lucky so far — those kind of passions have only erupted in massive bloodshed once (well, twice if you count the original revolution.) By definition, however, something that has already happened is no longer impossible. It’s easy for newspaper columnists to fantasize about disunited states, but only madmen would actually try to make them so. Unfortunately, the madmen are out there. It’s up to the rest of us to keep them under control.

It’s a given that people don’t like change: the tension is between the minority who would risk destroying the state they claim to be preserving and the more reasonable people who can navigate the shoals of progress without losing their minds.

Billmon’s European History studies went further than mine, evidently. I know a little about the Spanish Civil War as a dress rehearsal for WWII and curious fact that patriotic Americans enlisted on both sides[1][2] but the underlying themes of fear and misguided patriotism suggest some further study. For a start, this list post deserves a closer reading than I have given it so far.

I get this via email: you’re welcome to sign up (the links are below). This kind of reporting is essential stuff in any open society: massaging or manufacturing the message is all too common and it’s harder to track down the facts. But this is a good source of who’s paying whom to say what, who’s saying one thing to you and another to someone else . . .

THE WEEKLY SPIN, July 5, 2006

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THIS WEEK’S NEWS

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1. BBC Archives Reveal Spooks Vetted Staff
2. Big-Spending Brethren
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Continue reading “the news some would rather you didn’t know about”

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IMG_1404.JPG

Originally uploaded by matthewnstoller.

From the 14(?) person rally denouncing the NYTimes Treasonous Travel section. 

Seriously: the wingnuts could only get that many people to show up for this nationally significant debate . . . 

Remember the immigration rallies of earlier this year? Multiple cities, hundreds of thousands per city? 

Pimp My Code, Part 11: This Sheet is Tight:

Years from now, when you’re looking at your code, you should say, “Of course I wrote it that way — there’s no other decent way to do it,” and not, “What the hell was I thinking?”

I didn’t understand 10% of this but the last line? Yeah, I got that.

The Awful Truth:

“The NY Times points cranks, radicals, al-Qaeda operatives and would be assassins to the summer homes of Cheney and Rumsfeld”:

“In an apparent retaliation for criticism of its disclosure of classified intelligence to America’s enemies, the New York Times June 30th edition has printed huge color photos of the vacation residences of Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, identifying the small Maryland town where they live, showing the front driveway and in Rumsfeld’s case actually pointing out the hidden security camera in case any hostile intruders should get careless (…)
Make no mistake about it, there is a war going on in this country.”

The damning thing about this is that Rumsfeld OKed the article, photographs and all: obviously he’s on the side of the jihadis or islamofascists or whatever we’re calling this week. Journalists, I think was the Hate Word for this week.

Seriously, read the rest: it’s amazing how rickety the houses of cards these bedwetters live in that a travel article has them crying treason. As if they know what treason is (beyond “whatever I don’t like” of course).

Some timely news for the anniversary of the founding of the Republic

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Bush Directed Cheney To Counter War Critic (07/03/06):

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president’s statement.

Bush told prosecutors he directed Cheney to disclose classified information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

I’m not sure “I told him to “git ’em” but I didn’t say how. So I’m off the hook, right?” will work as a defense. But this comes from a guy who has never been held accountable: perhaps it’s time.

I mean the heritage of independence, of problem-solving, of actively creation and craft. A boutique acoustic maker — they supply kits and schematics for high-end speaker systems — is going out of business and a big reason is, for lack of a better phrase, the dumbing down of their market. They spend more time and effort on simpler, more basic questions than before.

The Size of the Market is Getting Smaller: (you have to scroll or use the search option: no anchor tags)

One thing I have noticed about the speaker building community the last few years is that it contains far fewer young people than it did in the early 90’s when North Creek began. I have thought about this a lot and the conclusion I have come to is that it is all about the vanishing ability of the average person to build things with their hands.

I attribute this to reliable cars.

Before about 1990, cars and particularly used cars were so fantastically unreliable that every guy I knew had a tool box in his trunk and was capable of changing a tire, a water pump, an alternator and its belt, etc. This stuff broke all the time, and the ability to work with one’s hands was practically a requirement to get through day-to-day life. In fact, by the time I was working for Apogee Acoustics and had the income to afford my first new car, I bought a Volvo. At the time it was considered a very expensive car, probably more than I could afford, but I bought it because it was the most reliable vehicle made. I had come to resent having to work on my old Impala every other weekend just to keep it running and safe. So I bought the Volvo, kissed the Impala “good bye”, and from that moment on my days “under the hood” were over.

Today, even the lowest price new car on the market is far more reliable than my trusty old Volvo. What this means is that the average young person today has no need to be knowledgeable about how to fix their car, hence limited need to use hand tools, so those skill required to build a cabinet and assemble a crossover are rare. This is the primary reason why we encourage our Echo and CM-7 loudspeaker kits for educational purposes, and why we will continue to offer them to educational facilities in the future.

An interesting observation: how close are we to a world where no one knows how to do anything, where a button with instructions but without a pictograph is a mystery? Or are mass-produced things so good that no one needs to build anything anymore?

Comments welcome (as always, of course).