Ginny

Age: 77 Place: Originally Nebraska, now Texas Family: Husband, 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law, 3 grandchildren Occupation: Retired Education: BA, MA Nebraska; Ph.D. UT-Austin Work On hhe Double (1979-1992); taught: ta Austin, Blinn Jr. College (1993-20015), Kelly Girls intermittently.

Fernandez Clarifies – As Do His Readers

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The consensus among Chicagoboyz seems that Obama will win; I would not argue. But the first commentor at Belmont Club’s post makes a point with which we might also find consensus (if, as one Chicagoboyz notes, also depression):

Last summer McCain said he would rather lose the nomination than lose the war and possibly this allowed some people who hadn’t before to understand the stakes involved.
 
McCain is no longer saying this because he doesn’t have to. But more than that, I think he now realizes the stakes involved require he win the election.

Fernandez analysis of McCain’s speech on Iraq & Afghanistan is thoughtful. Further commentary by Hanson is also to the point. This follows Belmont Club’s earlier analysis of Obama’s speech.

A Desire for Context from the Knowledgeable

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So, we’re having coffee after lunch and tune in C-span. The speaker , General Michael Rose, is at Columbia’s Saltzman’s Institute of War and Peace Studies making the argument of his new book, Washington’s War: The American War of Independence to the Iraqi Insurgency. I thought the analogy had some rather major weaknesses and found his position a bit irritating. Still, it is somewhat bracing to hear a British military man discuss our earlier conflicts. His very British point of view defines his values and positioning; they of course differ somewhat from a Midwesterner’s vision. He admires Petraeus, although the book was clearly written and argument solidified before the Petraeus strategy had developed. He remains sure, however, that we are losing, that the government there is accomplishing nothing, and that we should declare it a lost war, leave, and move on. His analogy encourages later, perhaps more cheerful, parallels as well – in the aftermath for Iraq (America’s Constitution) and for America (Britain’s great Victorian age). He repeatedly argues decisions should not be made in terms of the worst scenario – though we should have foreseen the worst scenarios when entering Iraq. Considering a blood bath might follow an early retreat is not reasonable, since bad seldom (not as much as 1 out of 10 he says) follows such conflicts.

He is a fifth generation military man. C-Span gives some biographical context: “Gen. Michael Rose (ret.) commanded the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment from 1979 to 1982. He was later commander of the UN forces in Bosnia (1994-1995). ” He strongly defends in the C-span interview as well as in his interview with Charlie Rose, the UN’s actions in Bosnia and criticizes NATO. The force in both interviews of this discussion indicates it contains points he wants to make. (I thought of Hanson’s argument that Lew Wallace did book tours for Ben Hur as much to defend his Civil War record as to sell books.) Also, he believes Tony Blair should have been impeached.

So, I turn to Chicagoboyz and ask for information, intelligence and a sense of proportion. (I did do a search of him on our site, but may have entered the search poorly. If, as seems to be happening lately, my mind is wandering and someone has talked of him, please let me know.)

Corporate Branding

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For my fellow Chicagoboyz who are interested in workable business models:

With Vistas, you will learn the real story — of how we are attacking the competitive casualty gap with a paradigm-changing tactical adaptive strategy focused on paradise value optimization. Yes, there will be some changes, but our core leadership mission remains the same one established by Chairman Emeritus Osama Bin Laden when he founded Al Qaeda in his family goat shed nearly 15 years ago: to create a robust, cave-centric, best-of-breed strategic organization for global caliphate management solution services. If we all pull together as accountable subteams, we are on-track to rebuild momentum after the Q4 Infidel elections!

From Ayman al Zawahiri.   via Instapundit.

 

The Human & The Ideological

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“They hate unpredictability. They hate anything which is in any way different. Since real art encourages you to be different, encourages you to recognize that you are different and special, and that’s in a way the essence of art. I mean, art is the perfect antidote to any sort of collectivism, so it is just the natural enemy [to totalitarianism], which is why I think the art that rose to the top in the GDR for me isn’t art at all. It is something that vaguely resembles art, but it is not at all the deep kind of experience that will help you explore your soul.” –   Writer – director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck of The Lives of Other People

This is romantic, but it’s also  true.   We’ve all become a bit cynical about art’s ability to truly make us conscious, certainly we know it doesn’t  always make us good.     But the paradox is that it can both connect us to others  but yet also lead us to understand (and even assert) our separate selves.    We see this dual process in the growth of the Stasi official, played by Ulrich Mühe in   The Lives of Other People  (Das Leben der Anderen).   The dead hand of the government twists and destroys; it grinds down and isolates him not only from others but from an understanding of his own humanity.   The director describes  the tension between principle and feeling; in America we have long seen this as the tension between heart and head, ideology and humanity.   Whatever we call them, we understand the process.    

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Preparing for Class

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With “Who’s Gona  Fill Their Shoes” in the background,  I come upon a passage apt  for discussions here of ambiguity:

 

A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.

Emerson – Nature – “Language”