Ernie Pyle

Some oldsters have occasionally commented “Why is there no Ernie Pyle in the current war”? For those of us that weren’t around for WWII, Ernie Pyle was an embedded journalist that wrote about the war from the perspective of the low level fighting men in a very folksy way.

There is one major reason that there isn’t any Ernie Pyle in the mainline media today, and that is because some of the news would be good, positive, and lead people to believe that the war was important and that we in combination with the Iraqi military are winning it. That isn’t an impression that very much of the mainstream media would like Americans to see, so it isn’t very likely that they are going to support regular dispatches from an Ernie Pyle.

The fact that none in the mainstream media are not going to support such reporting is less of an obstacle in the age of the internet however. http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/ is a Blog by Michael Yon who is an independent writer with US troops in Mosul Iraq. Many of his accounts are gripping, certainly not all are of that “good, positive” sort either … it is just that he is there and seems willing to report objectively, which is more than can be said for most of the US media.

For the left in this country, the loss in Vietnam was their shining victory. The combination of the media, university professors and students, and various radical groups around the country were able to do what no foreign power had ever done. Defeat the USA in war. That pinnacle of American impotence was maintained and even “improved” upon in the eyes of the left as by 1980, America cowered in front of students in Iran, and proceeded to lose 7 servicemen and accomplish nothing in a failed rescue attempt that should be known by all as “The Jimmy Carter Desert Classic”.

Since the media can’t pray, they wish upon a star every night that Iraq becomes “another Vietnam”. Since it isn’t a jungle, it isn’t communist, it isn’t split into a North and a South, and were we to leave, it isn’t clear what would fall to whom, they are never very specific of what they mean, but everyone of course knows what they mean.

They want America to lose. As badly as possible.They will do anything in their power to create if needed, and support in any way they can, an anti-war movement. They want a precise time for a pull out, even if it means that terrorists would just have to lie low and win after the date (probably ESPECIALLY if it means that). This is one of those cases where assuming that liberals are stupid would actually be “kinder” since one could then postulate that they just “don’t know” what would happen if the US is forced to pull out of Iraq and it is taken over by terrorists, but as I’ve said before I refuse the “liberals are stupid” path … even though in this case it pretty much only leaves the “liberals are evil” condition as an alternative.

I suspect in this case there IS some of the “I’m so mad I’m stupid” case of cutting off ones nose to spite their face. The hatred for George Bush, and the general fear of a strong US is so consuming for them that they absolutely refuse to look at consequences and just want to be able to point to Iraq as a failure and “another Vietnam” no matter what. It is much the same as the WMD issue. Certainly everyone knows that Saddam HAD WMD, he killed tens of thousands of Kurds using gas. The very same people that chortle about WMD not being found used the threat of Saddam using WMD as one of the reasons to not go to war. However, it remains a core tenant of liberalism that consistency is not an issue. To a conservative, if YOU also knew that Saddam had WMD, and actually used that fact as a reason that the US should not go to war in Iraq, you would be completely EMBARRASED to suddenly call Bush “stupid or disingenuous” for knowing what you knew, since that would be tantamount to calling YOURSELF names.

That would be true if you believed in consistency, but if you are a liberal, you don’t, so it is no problem. I suspect that most liberals assume that the WMD was either destroyed at the last minute, moved out of the country, of still hidden in the desert somewhere just as conservatives do. The difference is that they could care less … even it was moved out and is now in terrorist hands. They LOVE the fact that they can use the lack of WMD against the whole of the US intelligence, military, and of course the administration. Being wrong is weak, and the more weak the US is, the more they like it.

Thus the fervent hope for “another Vietnam”, which since there are no real parallels between Iraq and Vietnam in reality, simply means “public opinion turns against the war and America is forced to pull out in disgrace”. On that day the media and the left raise a lusty cheer, for not only has America failed, they will point back to that failure as the cause of all manner of ill, and to prevent the country from having the confidence to rise to challenge even students holding hostages for a very long time. They will have done all they can do to cause the failure, and they will lament the failure as an abyss that is not recoverable, and smirk. They will point to the “meaninglessness of the soldiers deaths”, and smile, how wonderful for all to wallow with them in the pit of a meaningless world.

Give Michael Yon a read, Ernie Pyle lives, he just has to be suppressed by the left these days.

Catch-22

I finally made it through Catch-22. I knew it was going to be lefty, but I really didn’t know how much. Most of us have used the term “Catch-22” at some point, and understand it’s meaning as “a self-defeating paradox”. In the book, if you ask to be grounded from flying missions because you feel you are insane, you can’t be grounded, since it is obvious you are sane if you will ask to be grounded from the dangerous missions. Unless you have the intellectual curiosity to try to grasp the liberal mind, that would pretty much cover the goodness in the book. I’m amazed that it is a “classic”, I’ve never seen the movie, but it can’t be true to the book or it would border on an X vs an R rating with all the connectionless sex involved.

Sometimes fiction can be quite expressive of beliefs and Heller does a good job of covering a lot of standard liberal thought in one novel. There is no God, nearly everyone is “crazy”, the world is entirely wrong and messed up, war (in this context WWII) is meaningless and not justified (no apologies are made to the Jews), capitalism, business, profit … all obscene and bad. Hookers, random sex, “good”, in that it is something to try to get more of because it feels good, but still meaningless. The bottom line is always pursuit of pleasure in the face of meaninglessness and foolish authority. Why can’t there just be more “random fun”?

The “hero” of the book is Yossarian, a bombardier that keeps trying to get out of flying any more missions via various schemes and interacts with all the other characters. Milo Minderbender is sort of a stand-in for capitalism. He is ostensibly in charge of providing food, but is sort of a cross between Radar O’Reilly and the head of Enron in that he creates one big syndicate that involves everyone in the war including the Germans and “everyone has a share”.

I keep trying to think back if I would have bought into this book more if I had read it when I “should have” … say college or shortly after. Very hard to say in that youth tends to be a time of confusion and questioning of meaning, and this book certainly has plenty of that. On the other hand though, this book was published in 1961. One of my “overall theories” is that once the “dominant thought” gets too strong, it can’t help but create it’s own opposition in a free society. The calm and comparatively peaceful (to WWII) 50’s with the “Father Knows Best” look and relatively doting and prosperous families gave rise to the rebellion and churn of the sick 60’s.

One could look at the odd little TV show “Family Ties” from the ‘80s and at least get the hint that in order to be a “rebel” in the face of parents that came of age in the ‘60s you would have to be a Conservative. Out on vacation I saw a bumper sticker that said “Annoy a Liberal. Work Hard, Succeed, Be Happy”, and I often suspect that we have shifted just about that far in America. To be a “good liberal” in this country you have to at least question the value of hard work, success, and replace happiness with anger it seems.

While the electorate as shifted ever so slightly to the conservative side, the dominant culture certainly remains liberal. The youth will always have a tendency to rebel against the dominant culture. When Catch-22 came out that meant rejecting God and religion, marriage and family, nationalism, the morals of society, and the idea of life having purpose. It seems to be at least worth a little thought that the 60’s liberals succeeded so well that the youth of today after being faced with the mass media and public education can “rebel” by accepting God and making religion a part of their lives, getting married and being faithful to their vows, loving and supporting their country, following a moral code, and believing in the meaning and sanctity of life.

For a liberal like Heller, it might be a bit of a Catch-22.

Post Vacation Blues

I’m back from the trip to Estes and having those usual “vacation is over blues”.

I won’t bore readers with any details of my attempted hike to Sky Pond that resulted in a difficult trip back to the trailhead from 4 miles up, and a night in the hospital in Estes Park, other than to make the points that giving blood a week prior to heading to elevation is not good idea, and they are really serious about altitude and hydration. I’ll find out more this week if there are any problems beyond the single event.

Estes Park stays at the top of our list of mountain destinations. We went to Jackson WY last year. The Tetons are very beautiful from the valley, but they are “up there”, and you are “down here” … in order to get up into the mountains it is more of a hike, and harder to get to the really great scenery. From the shorter hikes, a lot of the viewing is looking back out at the flat valley. There is a lot of taste in scenery, but my real problem is that Jackson seems to be becoming an ACTUAL example of what liberals claim America is, a place that is good for only the very wealthy.

Jackson has an airport that can handle all the private jets, and the land prices and the kinds of galleries and restaurants that are there show it. The place keeps moving up the dollar scale, and moving to the political left as well as more of the Hollywood types come in to act like their view of a cowboy and move the real cowboys out. Estes has everything from the KOA / YMCA / Super-8 that is actually cheap, to the Stanley Hotel where the Presidential Suite goes for $1,500 a night. Estes is like what America ACTUALLY is … a place where there is a bottom, a big middle, and a good sized top, and they can all get along and enjoy the scenery together because they know they are all generally where they are at because of the blessings and trials they have received in life, and what they have done with them.

Aside from the hike to Sky Pond that ended at Timberline Falls, we did get in a short hike up to Calypso Cascades which caused me now ill effects, and traveled over the Trail Ridge Road to search for Moose on the Grand Lake side. Two Moose were spotted, it appeared to be a cow and a calf, but they were not very cooperative relative to viewing. I have to give Jackson the nod for viewing of the Moose … we had a cow munching away outside our condo one night up there, and saw 3 large bulls on hikes up in the park last year.

So vacation is officially over and one day of work is under the belt

Wow

Like all mountain pictures, this one falls way short of capturing the view. We are up on a mountainside outside of Estes Park CO facing the range at Rocky Mountain National park. This is the view off the deck of the place we have rented for the week. The place is http://www.windcliff.com/ for any that want to look in more detail. Much more in reach to rent one of these for a week than to buy it, but fun to dream.

The Blog might be a little slower this week, the views are just too good for writing, although sitting and looking at them with the laptop and a cup of coffee isn't bad either ;-)

Give Death Meaning

I touched on a subtle method the media uses to sway public opinion in “a bit fruitless”, the coverage of the mother of a KIA solider that is camped out at the Bush ranch wanting to see him shows how the media gets on message and stays on message. By picking the stories that get the news, they get to give the country the impression they want, and as evidenced in our local paper the other night, this then allows the local Opinion Editors to pick up the strain and press it further.

First of all, there is ALWAYS some protester type around a President of either party wherever they go. During the last couple years of the Clinton Presidency there would almost always be one or more young women that would dress up in berets like the one Monica Lewinsky wore in one picture or a set with knee pads on in the front row. The mainline media almost always ignored them, and one needed to get on a “Drudge” or other source that was willing to report it in order to be aware of it. 

There are always “the insane” on any issue from insanity to space aliens to saving the one toed newt.

There are few sadder things in the world than a mother that has lost a child, but a mother that has lost a child in the service of our country that has to ask “why” is one. Last fall a 17yr old Eagle Scout fell off a bluff up by Red Wing and died, we contributed to a memorial project that will be done for him. In the past week or so, one young man of 21 was killed in a motorcycle accident in the area, and another 17 year old was killed when his car drifted over the center line and was struck by a semi. If one has faith in God in those cases, we trust him to have a reason, for those that have no faith, this is a random world, and death is just part of the random process. Meaningless.

I’m often struck by the difference between the way a conservatives and liberals generally look at some kinds of death. First, 9-11. I’ve heard multiple liberals utter some version of “Only 3K people died on 9-11, yet over 40K die on our highways every year, and nobody is going to war over that”. Somehow they equate a willful act of terrorism with an accidental result of a transportation system, and at some point I’ll blog on that. While conservatives tend to not say it, I believe because it is completely obvious, a death in service of our country is considered to be hugely more meaningful and easy to understand than a death on a highway, from a fall, or a host of other reasons that we hear of all the time which befall people at young ages and other.

The point of the media though is that they WANT the deaths of servicemen to be seen as “meaningless”. Dying on a road when your “mission” was to get some milk and it was a “failure” since you didn’t get the milk home is easy for a liberal to understand. It is meaningless, the way that life and death should be to a liberal. Volunteering to serve your country, removing a man that murdered 10’s of K from torture, started two regional wars, used poison gas on his own people from power, and taking part in a giant effort to form the first stable democracy in the middle east, that is very hard for a liberal to understand, since it seems to give “hints” of higher purpose.

This is an area that it is hard for me to plumb the depths of the liberal psyche, but I believe the answer lies in the importance of meaningless to a liberal. If there WAS anything such as “shared meaning”, or “higher purpose”, it could mean that many of their assumptions for life were flawed. The phrase “God and Country”, often used in concert with the idea of a solider going to battle comes to mind. If people really do believe that some beliefs, some thoughts, some ways of living are “better than others”, than there might be some legitimate reasons to go to war. To protect our way of life from random terrorism to the extent possible, to save others from tyranny, to stop genocide, to provide the chance to others for freedom, these might all be causes worth giving your life for, or taking another life for.

The battle of the liberal is often a battle against meaning, so it becomes especially strong when the issue of “what is worth fighting and dying for” comes in. To the liberal, that is easy, to coin a phrase from a 60’s anti-war anthem; “Absolutely Nuthin”. There are no values or thoughts that exceed the value of a meaningless life. Suicide, abortion, or euthanasia are all “freedoms” that the liberal seeks to maximize, because since life lacks higher purpose, it is “enjoyment” that gives it “dignity”, and war not only can shorten the party, it isn’t enjoyable. 

There is no “miracle of life” to protect and cherish, only a vast series of random actions that caused a meaningless consciousness to arise. The thought that one group of people would hold their random thoughts and values to somehow be so much “better” than another group that they would go to war is completely indecipherable to the liberal mind.

So they battle to reduce the deaths of all soldiers to meaningless. A mother’s cry that her son’s death is meaningless is magnified across the nation since it meets with the liberal’s view of the war, and the President is asked to “explain again”. Thus, the never ending battle between meaning and the abyss continues on as it has since Lucifer first fell from the heavens and God first called order from chaos.

Lambeau

Friday night the family made the pilgrimage to Lambeau field for “Family Night”. The tickets are sold locally in Green Bay for $8 each. We were able to score four nice seats for $180 on e-Bay. The stadium was packed, the weather was perfect and we were at Lambeau, it doesn’t get much better than that. The renovation of Lambeau was completed for the start of the ’03 season, and it is a thing of beauty. Besides the tickets we spent $5 to park at a church 5 blocks away, $70 or so, on food and drink, $180 for a hotel, $100 or so on souvenirs, and a few other sundry items around town. I mention this because I know that neither us or any of the 60 thousand fans there for a team scrimmage, nor any of the few hundred people at the Pro-Shop and Packer Hall of Fame Saturday had any positive impact on the local economy at all.

How do I know this? I’m no dummy, I listen to MPR, and every time they discuss the issue of stadiums they point out that there are NO STUDIES that show ANY positive impact of pro sports on the local community. Green Bay would be the same identical city without the Green Bay Packers, it has been economically proven. I’m not sure why we would have been over there spending money without the Packers, but MPR tells me it is so, so I would likely have traveled over to tour a paper plant or something. Life could be so confusing without MPR, I’m glad I have them to keep my mind right.

Having been born in Packerland is one of those blessings like being born in the USA that one would need to be a liberal to not be thankful for. If the Packers and the Packer story didn’t exist, they would be unbelievable as fiction. Even now, only a city of 100K people, it is the smallest town in the NFL. They have 12 NFL Championships, including 3 Super Bowl Trophies. Even more amazingly, the NFL Championship trophy is now the “Lombardi Trophy” in honor of Vince Lombardi, Coach of the Packers from 1959-1967.

Having lived in MN for 27 years, the first 14 of which the Packers stunk, the joy of the recent return to glory is especially sweet. The favorite Vikings fan approach during the era was “The Pack will NEVER be back !!!” … followed by some version of “ALL Green Bay has is history” … “and they ARE history” …”small market teams can’t compete any more” … “enough minorities will never play in Green Bay”… a team has to have an owner, a town can’t run a modern team” … and on and on. I’m sure that over those decades of abuse in the 29 years between titles, some few gave up, but the vast majority kept the faith. When the existence of your team is itself a miracle, it is very hard to lose faith in miracles.

Which brings me to my favorite Packer/Viking joke; The coach of the MN Vikings dies and goes to heaven (We’ll call him Mike Tice). Having been up there for a few weeks and settled in, he leaves his nice little house and goes out looking for the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who he also knows has died fairly recently (Mike Sherman), just to see how he is getting along. It doesn’t take him long to find that right in the middle of everything is this MONSTROUS place that is a replica of Lambeau field with huge spotlights shining the giant G, all decked out in garish green and gold, with a ton of Packer pennants, signs, and symbols all around.

It is more than Tice can take, so he goes to the administration building and looks up God. “God, I know I’m supposed to be happy here, but I can’t understand why I have the house I have, and Mike Sherman, who as far as I know, didn’t do anything at all that would justify that huge place that looks like Lambeau field that he has”.

God looks at him with a puzzled expression and says; “What do you mean Sherman’s house? That’s MY house!”.

A Bit Fruitless

This AM my daily perusal of CNN Web headlines turned up this one; “Dad: Marine Felt Mission ‘a bit Fruitless’”. 

Such a headline certainly lets one know what CNN thinks of the mission in Iraq. The power of the mainline press to shape public opinion remains large, and one of the reasons it remains large is that it is subtle enough for a lot of people to not even understand they are being manipulated. CNN can decide what family views they decide to put on headlines, but unless they make an explicit attempt to “poll all military families that have lost soldiers”, or some other likely equally heartless technique, it is unsurprising to see headlines like the above. 

The press and the left likes to point out that “talk radio”, “Karl Rove”, or other forces have “manipulated Americans”, which is of course true. We are surrounded by a LOT of forces that manipulate our opinions, some because they believe what they say, and some explicitly to manipulate for other purposes. 

In the world of ideas, “buyer beware”, and “comparison shopping” is far more critical than even the consumer world. It is no surprise that the media dislikes any competition in the realm of ideas.

What would the ratio of headlines like the following be to those like the above if a “fair method” was used?; “He was doing what he wanted and believed we had to protect freedom”, “He cared about the Iraqi people, and wanted to do whatever he could to give them a chance at freedom”, or “eHe believed in the mission and what he was doing, he knew the risks” . 

There is very little way we can know, although most of us that pay attention to local news, and some non-headline stories at the national level have seen sentiments like those I manufactured. That is somewhat unsurprising since we have a volunteer military force that at least in some cases likely had reasons for going into the military that might even come close to the honorable reasons all journalists have for going into their profession ... admittedly the highest calling of mankind, worthy of special honor and much constitutional protection if the papers are to be believed!

We all have biases, but the mainline media never admits to their biases, while the conservative media does. Fox is a new odd case … an outlet that attempts to show both sides, often in an explicit point-counterpoint format, but they make an attempt. The fact that NY Times, NBC, CBS, etc consider Fox biased for even providing a conservative perspective gives a pretty good indication of the level of their own bias. They find it an affront that somebody out there is willing to present a conservative view in anything other than a purely negative light.

For the “general public” though, it is the more subtle bias as in the headline of this news article that has the greatest effect. The constant “little stories” in which the bias is in what is selected to be reported vs what is not selected, and in what is the headline vs what is buried at the end of the piece. Day in and day out, the views of the reporters … that Iraq is hopeless, that the economy is bad, that the administration is corrupt, that the country is being run by the religious right, that things are “generally bad”, becomes the “common view” for those that are not selective in the ideas that constantly bombard their minds.

Don’t believe anything that you read at face value, even this blog. At BEST, it is someone doing their utmost to find the truth by looking at reality with all the honesty and capability they have. Since it is just one foolish human doing that, multiple sources are REQUIRED.

Criminal?

My short ride to work this AM was rewarded by an MPR segment that I think provides huge insight into the problems of us “all getting along”. The segment pointed out that; “In a study done up in Minneapolis, it was discovered that a very high percentage of stolen handguns fall into the hands of criminals.” This was straight news, it wasn’t April Fools, and they were not joking, it NEVER dawned on them that stealing a gun was a crime, so anyone that stole a gun was by definition a criminal

As I’ve said before, I refuse to follow the same thought pattern that liberals follow with conservatives (“conservatives are stupid”). I don’t believe these people are stupid, I believe that their mental model is SO different from someone with even a moderate conservative bent, that communication is very difficult. My “guess” is that they see stealing a handgun in much the same way that a conservative (normal person?) would see getting a speeding ticket, or even a single drunk driving arrest. “Breaking the law”, yes, and worthy of punishment, but not “a criminal”.

To the liberal minded folks doing the news, and to the folks doing the study, “criminal” had some other unstated definition, but it was assumed to be understood by listeners, and it certainly didn’t include stealing a handgun and not getting caught. Any person with a set of values by which “a crime” is something beyond “getting caught and getting convicted” tends to look at such a study, and reporting it without laughter, as “stupid”.

A liberal looks at many things that same way, just from the opposite perspective … the price of oil, the war in Iraq, the economy, judicial appointments, and a whole host of items with the mindset that “well of course they are THIS way, and if you don’t see it that way you are STUPID” … and they often get quite exasperated and usually angry if they are confronted with someone that seems to have rational reasons that they can’t refute, but they KNOW they have to be refutable since they have the right answers!

Why is the country more polarized? Because our ability to select the news we hear is greater than ever before. Many liberals listen to ONLY Public Radio, and read ONLY the NY Times and/or something like Time or Newsweek. Since the 80’s, there are also plenty of Conservatives that ONLY listen to some type of talk radio and get news from Fox News (actually, there they hear BOTH sides … but that tends to make the liberals even angrier), and then pick up a conservative publication or Web sources for the rest of their news.

The schools are less of a mixing area then they used to be … the constant removal of any mention of God, and the focus of teaching “values” like gay sex and promiscuity has led more and more conservatives to private schools or home schooling. Issues like Abortion and Gay Marriage have segregated the churches so the liberal churches tend to be forced further and further down the path of a social message outside the Bible, which drives Christians toward churches that teach the Bible. Thus segregated, the Bible based churches tend to identify with Republicans, and the society based churches tend to identify with the Democrats. (with the Catholics split right down the middle between those that follow the teachings of the church, and those that don’t … but like true liberals, still want the benefits of course).

So we have people listening to different stories and generally not mixing with each other. Amazingly, they become polarized, and start looking at the world in such different ways that they can’t seem to make sense of what each other is saying. My answer is “you have to listen to the people on the other side, and AT LEAST try to understand how they are looking at things. Unfortunately, it looks to me like the division will keep getting wider for at least a good long while, and since not even something as elementary as 9-11 was able to significantly bring the country together, I’m not sure what is likely to change it.

Recess

Politics seems to mostly remain blessedly on vacation. Bush has made a “Recess Appointment” of John Bolton, who the Democrats successfully filibustered, preventing confirmation. The web is great, Bill Clinton made 144 recess appointments, including an Attorney General for Civil Rights, and an openly Gay Ambassador to Luxembourg. I’m not sure which is the more important ambassadorship, the UN or Luxembourg, but it seems close. How well will the press do at providing some context for a recess appointment?

One of the dings on Bolton of course is that he is “mean”. Ten years ago he yelled at a subordinate, and rumor has it he hung up on somebody at some point. People have mentioned that those items would have gotten him fired in “any corporation in America”. From my experience, those kinds of comments only prove they have clearly never worked in ANY corporation in America … nor based on my limited experience with dealing with global corporations (usually when a computer was broken, and people were unhappy) … at any corporation in the world either. The likely answer would be that either they have never worked ANYWHERE, or that they are simply making the statement up for political purposes, which is the most likely answer.

I heard second hand that Charles Krauthammer was pointing out that when one looks at the 190 countries in the UN, a good deal of the countries are not the kind of garden spots with excellent manners and civility that your typical very nice Democrat is used to. Bolton may have yelled at someone or even hung up on them, but likely a significant number of the ambassadors to the UN have killed more than one person in cold blood, or been involved in ordering such in order to get their plum assignment living high in NYC with diplomatic immunity. It is quite common for the tin-pot dictator de jour to name some crony or another to the post at the UN for “services rendered”. In a lot of the world, those “services” aren’t all that pretty. That is the kind of perspective it would be nice if the general media provided … but somehow I doubt they will get around to it.