verging on random

Why does everyone pick on America?

January 30, 2011 on 10:13 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

I swear US conservatives must pore over every item in the daily news, looking for opportunities to get righteously indignant about insults to the Exceptional United States of America™.

The latest reason for them to clutch their pearls is the perceived offence given by Chinese pianist Lang Lang when he played ‘an anti-American propaganda song known throughout China’ at the White House. Moe Lane at Redstate described this as ‘The PRC had one of their pet pianists play an anti-American, Korean War-inspired ditty (did you know that we’re jackals?’

Reports Ann Althouse, ‘“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia’. And who could be a more unbiased commentator than a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia? Gateway Pundit fulminated that ‘The US was humiliated in eyes of Chinese by a song used to inspire anti-Americanism’. See, already they’ve got Jim Hoft writing Chinglish without using definite article!

I think this sensitivity towards the music that we hear on public occasions is quite justified. I look forward to that anti-British, War of 1812-inspired ditty ‘The Star-spangled banner’ disappearing forever from ceremonies where the Poms are present. Because I’m sure our friends across the Pacific wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of their oldest and dearest ally, let alone insult the Brits or humiliate them in eyes of Americans.

It’s all Obama’s fault if it ends badly, but if not then … shit IDK what I mean

January 29, 2011 on 7:47 pm | In Uncategorized | 3 Comments

I’m having tremendous fun reading the wingnut responses to chaos in the Middle East. I have no doubt Orwell’s Law* will ensure they all spout the same idiotic narrative in a few days but for now, they have been overtaken by events. Observing the utter confusion within their ranks is the best entertainment I’ve had since I don’t know when.

For some, this is the culmination of the grand neocon adventure of 2002; American power conquering Afghanistan and Iraq was always supposed to see 100 flowers of democracy bloom and that’s obviously what we are witnessing now. Except self-evidently it’s not, and we might end up with a lot of Islamofascists running countries that used to be controlled by nice pro-American authoritarian governments. Except we don’t know for sure that’s what will happen, and maybe lots of happy Western-looking young people who can speak English, well kind of, will take over the streets and let the media create one more frabjous colour revolution.

Shit, who knew foreign policy could be so complicated? Not Pamela Geller and Michelle Malkin, that’s for sure, who are both working themselves up into a perfect frenzy of outrage but with completely different targets and mutually exclusive interpretations.

So we are blessed with the likes of Jay Nordlinger (no I am not going to link to any of these repellant individuals) crying hallelujah brothers the George W Bush revolution is here, while the even more repellant Stanley “Obama is a Kenyan socialist” Kurtz deplores the whole exercise. Stan indeed adds a new level of hilarity to the affair by gravely noting those issues in which the Obama Administration has followed his wise advice, and others in which it has inexplicably ignored his sage counsel.

Nobody could ever accuse wingnuts of having self-esteem problems, no matter how much they might be contradicting each other. Both Nordlinger and Kurtz however have one belief in common, which is that the Exceptional United States of America™ should be managing the whole crazy episode and not leaving it to the fucking Egyptians who these days couldn’t be trusted to build a McDonald’s outlet, let alone a pyramid.

Sadly, the contemporary equivalent of William F Buckley’s National Review, otherwise known as Sarah Palin’s Facebook site, has yet to tell wingnuts how to interpret events, so about all  everyone can agree on is that Muslims are just the worst people ever. But I’m sure in due course we’ll be informed how the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have saved us from a fate beyond our worst imaginings, and that the only sensible response to regional instability is to send another 10 or 20 or 759 brigades of Marines to fight terror.

Persuading the Israelis will be a bit of a bugger though, given that US strategy seems to be having the effect of progressively wiping out all the Arab governments that were prepared to tolerate Israel’s existence. Still I’m sure they will think of something. The Senator for Israel isn’t standing for re-election in 2012, so perhaps they can make Joe Lieberman ambassador to Tel Aviv.

One can only gaze in awe at the latest manifestation of US foreign policy since 1918: ignorant people adopting inept measures in pursuit of unattainable objectives.

*Orwell’s Law, which I just invented, states that all adherents to a partisan ideological perspective will adopt a uniform interpretation of empirical data, no matter how irrational or illogical that interpretation may be. Group cohesion is infinitely more important than intellectual integrity.