Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Control Freaks
Essay Completed June 27, 2004:
The older I get, the more aware I become of a salient fact: Most people are control freaks. It seems we find the decisions that concern things under our own control, decisions for which we�re responsible, boring. We like to decide things for the other guy. Our neighbor may have handicaps we don�t have; he may be accountable to other people to whom we don�t need to answer, under any circumstances. It doesn�t matter. We want things done by other people, done the way we think we would do them if we were they. Each year, I�m more convinced than I was the year before that all the world�s problems come from people like this.
In fact, watching people make decisions that affect a lot of other people, I see one common factor in the decisions that are most universally regarded, later, as bad ones. The factor is not poor judgment; it�s ignorance. Once our interest is piqued in how a thing is done, and we know someone�s doing it differently than the way we would do it, we all have this tendency to issue statements & commands when the wisest among us would be asking questions. If, that is, the wise would see fit to poke their noses into the matter at all. Lilliput wants Blefescu to open eggs on the little end. Left unasked is �exactly what catastrophe will ensue if they don�t?�
This is Kerry�s one shot at getting into the White House. Islamic terrorist thugs want us to do things the Islam way; Europe wants us to do things the European way. We have a bizarre political environment thriving right now, in which it�s perfectly okay to pontificate �Bush should have done this� and �Bush should be doing that.� And these statements at least have the makings of perfectly legitimate campaign issues. To evolve to that point, however, those statements have to mature into arguments, and before they can be reasonable arguments there are questions to be answered. What happens if he doesn�t, and why? What misfortune befell us when he did something, how do you link it to what he did, and where was the opportunity to avoid the misfortune? To say nothing of, Mr. Huffer-Puffer, how do you know all this?
In this way, the President�s most vocal detractors share some characteristics with the people our troops are fighting. This war started because Lilliputians don�t like the way we open our eggs. To them, words like �dominion,� �bailiwick� and �jurisdiction� are foreign concepts. They want things done their way. It matters not at all who�s doing them, or why, or how far-reaching the effect is.
Now admittedly, Iraq affects everybody � it is certainly not the President�s private breakfast, and the consequences of his worst decisions would be far-reaching. But the point stands, whether it�s a private affair or not, it�s still his job, and the respect for presidential authority in military matters has sunk to a depth I find rather shocking. The decisions we argue about interminably belong to the President. He heads up the Executive Branch � not the �Agent Branch�.
I�ve heard since before the invasion of Iraq, from many directions, that the President �rubbed nations the wrong way� when he didn�t �build a coalition.� That was all fine and good so long as it didn�t interfere with doing the job. But now, such military endeavor is made at the behest of several factions with disparate interests, and we�ve really hurt ourselves.
To start with, we�re losing momentum through the perception that we�ve changed the goal in invading Iraq. Weapons of Mass Destruction; Collusion with Al-Qaeda and other organizations; liberating the people of Iraq � which is it? This is a valid criticism. It�s a myth, however, that the goal has changed across time � the goal has changed across the several factions in the coalition we did build. The correct response is �of course we have several goals, what do you expect?� That�s the price of building coalitions. This seems to be one of the reasons why decades ago, wars were fought and won with clearer definitions of success. Back then, we installed a team � an executive team � and trusted them to do the job.
This is a political cost, not a tactical one. But the benefit of building a coalition was supposed to be entirely political to begin with, and although some may not be clear on how it�s so, a political misfortune can cost lives. Bush has incurred anger not through his failure to build a coalition, or to put it under the control of the UN, but from capitulating � successfully � to those who would require a coalition to begin with. The demands for a coalition belied underlying control-freakishness. I say that because, to the level of my own satisfaction, the �plan� leading from a coalition to a greater likelihood of tangible success, was never really demonstrated and I have serious doubts that it existed.
What we�re seeing here, is a lesson. Our most strident liberals, those so entrenched in the liberal mindset that they engage passionately in trying to sell it to people, hurt themselves when they use this situation to damage Bush. He has created a possibility of failure for himself this November, by behaving in a way that, according to them, is always correct. As resentment and recalcitrance rose to greet him, from out of nowhere came the idea that negative feelings could be mollified if he modified his methods. The lesson � and I really doubt Bush is learning it for the first time � is this. When people constantly criticize what you do, a lot of the time it has little to do with what you do, they just don�t like you. They�ve already made up their minds they want you gone.
This is true of most control freaks. It�s true of the people we�re fighting right now, and when John Kerry talks about what Bush should have been doing, keep in mind it�s true of Kerry as well.
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