Short Diversion

Just a short drive-by here; wanted to drop a few links to make you think. First is a bit of a diversion from the usual fare. Gateway Pundit threw up a little composition last week about six bogus stories that have recently come out of Iraq. My purpose isn’t to drag that little tempest into this space but to call down even more fire upon my favorite slapping bag: Big Media. (Who happen to have positive approval ratings in the low to mid 20’s. Take a look at Congress’ numbers: 14%. Holy cow! Lower than HMO’s, and that’s saying something.) If CNN et al. were employees we’d have fired them long ago. Instead we’re just voting with the remote. Now I'm just waiting for them to realize no one's watching anymore.

The second is another excellent installment from the always switched on Michael Totten. The interesting thing about this particular piece isn’t its substance, but the backlash it’s generating. All Michael does for a living is go to a particular place and document what he sees to the best of his ability. (The difference being that he’s self-financed, beholden to no one, and isn’t filtered through an editor.) This documentation isn’t jiving too well with some folks, who are basically calling him a sellout and patsy for not saying things are a complete disaster. If you’ve read Michael for any length of time you’ll know that he’s nobody’s bitch when it comes to maintaining the party line.

That is all. Go forth and think for thyself.

Ares

A Little Dope

I had the distinct displeasure of recently donating a chunk of my life to a piece of crap in Rolling Stone entitled How America Lost the War on Drugs. I had high hopes for the piece, given the depth and breadth of the topic. It’s a ripe and nuanced subject that the author bludgeons his way through with blunt political indictments and stubby metaphors. In a topical landscape that cries out for reason and logic-based analysis we instead get Ben the finger pointing doomsayer.

The stupid f’ing position of pieces like this is that the “War on Drugs” is a finite, closed-ended thing. Let’s place it alongside the unreferenced War on Crime and War on Fire, shall we? Somebody’s house got robbed somewhere yesterday, therefore we’ve lost the War on Crime. A house burned down somewhere today; therefore we’ve lost the War on Fire. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? No more stupid than invoking the name of every two-bit bandito hiding in a mountain cave or jungle hut and equating their continued existence to a complete failure of the entire system. The real battle here is climbing the mountain of human apathy and ignorance.

Here’s another little booger in the sterile salad bar of the article’s reasoning: Pablo Escobar had to be killed, basically executed outright, because he could not be brought to justice. If you don’t believe me read Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden. Pablo was the embodiment of the idea that not every devil will be prosecutable. Some people will just need to be killed, and they won’t always offer you the conscience alleviation of pointing a gun at you. (Don't think of it as assassination, think of it as Goodbye Earl on a geopolitical scale.) If you want to reduce it to a numbers comparison Pablo is probably responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. Osama does it on television; Pablo did it in a cellar. Dead is still dead.

Further on the article trots our more of the same tired and thin “analysis”. The author talks about Gene Halislip, a “top ranking DEA administrator” that says we missed the magic moment when we could have shut down the meth epidemic before it even started. (According to the author meth used to be confined to biker gangs in northern California prior to becoming a national problem. He should have been in my summer school classroom in 1988 when the kids next to me were doing lines of it.) Apparently all problems in life boil down to retrospective moments where it all could have been prevented and someone is always to blame. In the author’s case it’s the Regan administration, which had the chance to outlaw ephedrine and didn’t. (Funny, I always thought Congress passed the laws in our system of government.) Nothing like being a few decades beyond a decision to render a nice, round, post hoc opinion about how stupid people were at the time.

Then we move on to that “most powerful country on Earth” reference. Because having a slew of nuclear weapons and putting humans on the moon is the same thing as finding a guy hiding in a South American jungle hut. That’s a lazy-assed pluck of a lowest common denominator metaphor. I’m calling a euphemism flag on that journalistic play.

We’ve got to get beyond this lazy fixation with defining moments. All human behavior is attached to a time line and will continue accordingly. Crime and the drug trade are only one aspect of that behavior. The supposition of articles like this is it’s possible to have a closed, neatly tied ending to all of this. With that underpinning you can attack any direction you see fit, and lob criticism into any set of coordinates that supports your thesis. I suppose if there is any fault to be found here it’s in my expectations. I was hoping for insight and thoughtful analysis from a magazine that is devoted to celebrity aggrandizement. Tiger Beat for adults that never quite outgrew the fascination with the beautiful people.

Ares

Baby Lothario

So, my lovely assistant D. and I trundled over to La Fonda Latina for some good chow on a day full of office politics and nonsense. I’m proud to say I got her hooked on their Seafood Paella, while I’m still partial to the Bocadillo Vegetariano. We park ourselves in the sun room, next to a woman with two small children: a boy, perhaps 3 years old, and a girl, about 18 months. The boy, though wandering a bit with his chips and queso, is quiet and well-behaved, a perfect angel with big blue eyes and blond hair.

After ordering, I visit the restroom, and when I return, D. tells me she has been “making friends.” No sooner have I regained my seat when I feel small hands encircle my elbow. A tiny intense face, covered in snot and queso, leans close. “And what is your name?” he asks quietly. “My name is Athena. What is your name?” “Gus” he whispers.

My brain is completely divided. One half is recoiling in horror at the snot and queso that is being deposited on my sweater and hand-woven scarf (Christine Stanton, for the fiber fanatics among you). The other half is completely smitten with this little Casanova. My dilemma is solved: his lunch arrives, and he takes his seat. Then our lunch arrives, and we jump into it. Throughout our dining experience, he stands on his chair periodically, quietly facing my back, and placing his hands on my shoulder blades, as though performing some toddler variation of Reiki.

We finish before the woman and children, and after we leave the restaurant I tell D. she needs to check my back for tiny snot-and-queso handprints. She informs me she cannot find any, which is a relief.

Later, back at the office, I tell C., another co-worker, about the Baby Lothario. As I tell the story, my left hand rests on my left hip, and I feel something. Dammit. Tiny snot-and-queso handprint.

Athena

Pimping Out A Paste Eater

This transcends silly and plants both feet firmly in the stupid. Hillary’s campaign issued a press release taking shots at Barack Obama. The particular angle of this issue was that Obama has really planned to run for president all along. (Can we get an official ruling on how many years constitute an “all along” tag?) As reference to their claim the Hillary campaign cites Obama’s kindergarten and third grade teachers. WTF? Good thing I won’t ever run for president. The quote would be a little something like this:

Mrs. Mansburger, Ares’ Kindergarten teacher: “He was a hyperactive little boy that spent a lot of time with his finger up his nose and ate a lot of paste.”

Dude, seriously, WTF? If we’ll all consult our collective rear-view mirrors we’ll see the caricature of presidential elections far behind us. We’ve now moved into strange, unfathomable territory.

Ares

Future Branding

I’ve had a little thought dingle berry floating around my head for a few years. I wonder what kind of sports mascots we’re going to have in one hundred or two hundred years. The Pittsburg Pirates and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers inspired this power think. Pirates were the equivalent of common thugs back in their day. For that matter, there are still parts of the world where people are killed by pirates. I suppose the difference is nobody in our society is dying at their hands. Once everyone who was victimized by a given group of criminals or thugs is gone the stigma dies out with them.

So this leads to my only partially joking hypothesis. A hundred years from now Los Angeles will have a pro sports team called the Crips. New York will have one called La Cosa Nostra. Detroit will probably have one called the Jihadis. And our current home town of Atlanta will most likely have a team of some variety called the Thugs or the Pimps. Not too much of a stretch of the imagination if you just go forward far enough.

Ares