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With the U.S. presidential election now safely in the rear view mirror, it may be a good time to address European animosity toward George W. Bush. From everything I've read and seen, W. is indeed widely loathed throughout Western Europe. Yurpeen venom is foolish and short-sighted for a number of reasons, but Europe really gave away the game when its media and statesmen tacitly attached culpability for the Iraq War to W. specifically, and not to the United States generally. From where I'm sitting, it looks like the next president will simply have to utter some friendly words about a "fresh start" or "new beginning" during his inaugural address, and Europe will swoon at his feet. [Update: like the scatterbrained, menepausal old maid that she is.] All parties will go back the status quo ante bellum, except for Iraq and Afghanistan and anybody else Bush overthrows in the next four years.
If my supposition is correct, it's a delightful state of affairs for the United States. Bush can do almost anything in his second term, and blame will be almost entirely attached to him rather than the country. Europe's blind loathing gives Bush a blank check to be even more aggressive in his second term.
This brings me to my idea for managing the Iranian nuclear problem. Bush should request a contingent declaration of war from Congress, to the effect that should Iran be shown to have developed or possess even one nuclear weapon, a state of war will immediately commence between the United States and Iran, with full support of the Congress for the deployment of nuclear weapons. Give it an expiration date in 2010.
Such a move would be blunt, but it removes the bullshit factor. If the mullahs understand that their country will immediately be nuked if the United States determines Iran itself has nukes, they'd have to be suicidal to continue their program. And then the E.U. could play "good cop" some more.
Normally a U.S. president wouldn't be so pushy, but where's the harm? Y'all already hate him.
Before his re-election, many Europeans did make a distinction between the administration and the general population of the United States. The controversy over the 2000 election and a widespread sense that Bush's victory was illegitimate allowed for such a separation. "I'm not anti-American, I'm anti-Bush" was the mantra.
This is no longer the case, however, as Bush won 2004 with a small but solid majority. So you have it backwards, Sterling: in his second term, the country will be blamed, whereas beforehand, "America" was given the benefit of the doubt.
Your suggestion that we threaten Iran with nuclear war is sheer brilliance. If only you were running the show instead of that wimp Cheney.
It worked with the Soviets. Frankly, Jame, what other options are there? The threat of nuclear bombardment is the one thing that might stop a nation from going nuclear.
And I'm not sure you're right about America being blamed. Thanks to the media, at most this shapeless group of "evangelicals" is to blame. When was the last time an evangelical was shown in a movie made by Hollywood or featured on TV? It's a bogeyman, just like Bush.
Posted by: Sterling on November 28, 2004 03:13 PMIn order to stop nuclear proliferation, we had to start it. In order to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, we had to use them. Brilliant.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on November 28, 2004 05:42 PMWhy don't you just nuke them pre-emptively while you're at it? That guarantees they will never have nukes. In fact, nuke Russia now too while you're at it before they do their upgrade -- it's your last chance. And Pakistan. And India.
Posted by: Stefan Geens on November 28, 2004 07:10 PMThe idea is to keep anybody from getting nuked, Stefan. If states in central and south Asia acquire nukes, it becomes a virtually certainty that nukes will fly.
Contracts are only worth a damn if someone is willing to enforce them - so let the Euros make all the agreements with Iran that they consider necessary, and let the U.S. paint the consequences of violation in the starkest terms possible.
Speak softly and carry a big MIRV.
Posted by: Sterling on November 28, 2004 07:53 PMUmm. So how do you suggest the addressing the lack of faith in, and the animosity towards, your dear leader, of everyone outside the US, and of Wall Street? Perhaps you should contingently declare war on China, Japan and Manhattan, should the dollar breach Ä1.50?
Posted by: Aidan Kehoe on November 28, 2004 08:20 PMIt doesn't bother me in the slightest that people outside of the U.S. don't like Bush. All I'm suggesting is a way for the U.S. (and the world, really) to take advantage of that antipathy. Specifically, the U.S. should be the biggest badass it can for the next four years, and then it can ease up for a while after that.
Aside from that, there are fundamental differences in the political philosophy of the United States versus that of Western Europe (and Canada). The U.S. is essentially Lockean, Western Europe basically Cartesian. We have grave differences in our approach to government and social equity/status. As long as Americans maintain low tax rates and high birth rates relative to the E.U., reconciliation seems unlikely.
Posted by: Sterling on November 28, 2004 09:01 PMWhat you overlook is that the mullahs are indeed suicidal, or rather, do not think in quite the same way as a secular wingnut like yourself. This is a regime that sent boys as young as 12 to fight saddam. They love their lives, perhaps, but they love power more, and they are not necessarily as sophisticated in world politics as you surmise. Plus I think they doubt we'd do it. So we'd have to nuke them a couple of times, like we did the Japanese. Frankly I'd rather some other country have the distinction of being the only one to repeatedly bomb civilian populations with the worst weapons man has invented. There's a reason people don't like Americans.
Posted by: Mullah Homer on November 29, 2004 04:54 AMSterling, I dont think nuclear war is a good idea. Do you really understand the motivations of the Iranians enough to think this situation can be resolved with violence?
I am also going to agree with Jame, I think you have the implications of the 00/04 elections reversed.
Posted by: Kuatto on November 29, 2004 05:16 AMKuatto wrote: Do you really understand the motivations of the Iranians enough to think this situation can be resolved with violence?
Sterling responds: ROFL. I understand them well enough to know that the threat of violence is the only way to avoid actual violence. It's called "brinkmanship".
Kuatto also wrote: ...Could you live with yourself knowing that you have killed those in Iran who are working peacefully for democracy?
Sterling responds: You need to come to grips with the notion that the 21st century is likely going to be much bloodier than the 20th. (And that's saying something.) See if you can follow my logic - widespread nuclear proliferation increases to a virtual certainty the likelihood of one or more large nuclear exchanges - numerous cities destroyed, hundreds of millions killed or displaced. One or more much smaller nuclear attacks, or a convincing threat of nuclear attack, could greatly restrain nuclear proliferation. Therefore the United States should express its determination to utterly annhilate any country that henceforth develops a nuclear weapon.
See, the choice isn't whether nuclear weapons are going to be used in the next 50 years, it's whether they're going to be used a lot or a little.
Mullah Homer wrote: . Plus I think they doubt we'd do it. So we'd have to nuke them a couple of times, like we did the Japanese. Frankly I'd rather some other country have the distinction of being the only one to repeatedly bomb civilian populations with the worst weapons man has invented. There's a reason people don't like Americans.
Sterling responds: If there's one thing that the last three years has made abundantly clear about Bush, Cheney, Rice & Rumsfeld, it's that they're not real big on bluffing. This has surely been noted in Tehran.
I hope that the United States remains the only country ever to nuke another. But keeping that distinction might mean we have to nuke a few more, or at least convince a few more that we are willing to nuke them.
Posted by: Sterling on November 29, 2004 06:05 AMYour assertion here that Bush take advantage of the world's hatred for him rather than his country is totally absurd and reminds me of how friggin' obnoxious you are...but what's scary is that I'm almost positive you're being serious. Jame is right (even if he did call me a bitch last week); the world gave us a break the first time around but is much less forgiving this time.
Whatís most frightening, however, is that W is prick enough to do just that. ìFuck the world, they hate me anywayî. Itíll take America decades to repair relations damaged by Wís next four years of treating the world like his own personal ranch.
Bush is likely to go the other way. Circumstances, not a change of heart, have forced the US to be a little more flexible of late. The administration seems to be trying to mend fences with the allies. I don't think the 'fuck-you' approach is in vogue, although the neo-cons and hawks remain committed to unilateralism where possible.
Nuking Iran in a preventative strike, especially without making a sincere and difficult attempt at reaching a verifiable agreement on Tehran's nucear program, would be a moral digression of proportions akin to Naziism.
Bush says he wants a deal to be verifiable. So he should. But note, Sterling, that he's talking about deals.
I'm talking about deals, too.
The important thing to recognize is that once a country crosses the nuclear threshold, it surrenders any claim against being targeted by nuclear weapons in war.
Posted by: Sterling on November 30, 2004 02:35 PMWait a minute here, I think there are a few issues which need to be addressed prior to even addressing Iran. First, the true fear of Iran is due to the fact that we have created an enormous power vacuum in the Middle East by taking out the iron fisted Hussein. The only way to have peace in the Middle East is for everyone to convert to some religion, and that's the same relgion kids, or everyone to have the same strategic power. Otherwise, we are going to see the same senseless bloodshed, genocide (the Germans don't have the patent on this one do they?), and bombing of the world's largest kitty litter box.
Now, we have Iran moving towards nuclear capabilities. Who else in the general region have nukes? Let's see, Pakistan, India, and who else...Israel. Face it Robert, it is inevitable that some other country in that region is going to try to develop nukes just to keep the radicals in their own country at bay and prove that they are "standing in opposition of Israel."
If I had to make a wild presumption, I think Khatami's run for the bomb is one designed to just save his own butt. The BBC doesn't call him embattled all the time, just most of the time. If we, the USA, step into Iran, we are going to have opened up shop for the next generation of anti-American jihadists.
Posted by: Sanford on November 30, 2004 06:14 PMThere's no point in you coming here, Sanford, if you're not going to agree with me. It is you, after all, who owns a t-shirt that reads "Kick their ass and take their gas."
It's like 23 to 1 here - I'm under constant siege. I saw your name in the recent post column and said - aloud - "Yippee kai yay, the cavalry's here!" And then you show me no love, whatsoever.
My disappointment is bottomless.
Posted by: Sterling on November 30, 2004 06:50 PMDon't take it so hard Rob - it's all about timing. All I am saying here is, we made a mistake getting into Iraq, and the main mistake was a lack of planning. Not in the planning of how to roll through the country, nay, it's the lack of planning in how to get out.
If you want my $0.02 on geopolitics, personally I would have hit North Korea first, and probably hardest. Next, I would have rolled Iran because we had already crippled Iraq with economic sanctions. Then, with Iran out of the way, the next stop should have been France. Oh, that's right, I forgot, 'le Resistance ( what a load of crap PR move that was. There were more French working for der Furher than there were Germans during WW2, but I digress) might have dusted off their berets and we might have had to fire a round or two. No wait, that's right, it's France we're talking about - no shots would need to be fired.
Face it, the mistake was made in trying to finish his father's fight for him. Well, that plus I like to think I majored in Int'l Relations for some reason or another.
Peace Through Superior Firepower.
Posted by: Sanford on November 30, 2004 08:38 PMSterling, your friends take talking points from Kerry? Rad.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on November 30, 2004 09:24 PM99, you pepper your comments with late-80's slang? Bodacious.
Posted by: mike on November 30, 2004 09:54 PMDude, you're just mad cause you got faced.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on November 30, 2004 10:24 PMSanford's a friend of Jame's too.
True story - One time I walked by Sanford's dorm room, and he just stared out at me. So I poked my head in the door and said "What's up?" and he just kept staring at me. "Sanford, why the fuck are you staring at me?" No response. "Well, fuck you, you fucking fuck. I've got better things to do." And still he stared, without saying anything. I stormed out, angry.
Turns out he was in a diabetic coma.
Posted by: Sterling on December 1, 2004 05:16 AMYeah, I'd seen Sanford in those comas too. But I think on that particular occasion, Sterling, he was faking it.
Posted by: Jame on December 1, 2004 08:59 AMNo wait, I can't believe that Kerry indicated that he would have invaded North Korea, then Iran, then France did he? If so, it's no wonder he didn't get elected. Well, that plus his entire campaign was run like a bandgeek would run a football game. Plus, I couldn't imagine any good card holding Democrat making fun of the French Resistance. The last election made me ashamed, genuinely ashamed that Bush and Kerry are the best that this country has to offer.
I'm not taking points from Kerry, I'm taking points from my father, who volunteered and served 2 duties in Viet Nam, and the surrounding regions/countries (ALLEGEDLY), though those borders "were not very well marked", as a Ranger. The biggest fear that Veterans of this era have isn't how to get into war, anyone can do that, it's how to win and get back out.
Finally, and as a general point of order, what does any medical condition have to do with one's opinion? As well Rob, you can't give me the, "Don't show up if you don't agree with me" crap, it makes you seem less intelligent than you are.
Sanford - As well Rob, you can't give me the, "Don't show up if you don't agree with me" crap, it makes you seem less intelligent than you are.
I was kidding. I'd be tickled pink to have you here even if you'd become a marxist mormon.
Jame - Yeah, I'd seen Sanford in those comas too. But I think on that particular occasion, Sterling, he was faking it.
Well, then he was doing a particularly good job of it, because the ambulance came for him 1/2 hour later.
And Sanford, your medical condition doesn't have anything to do with your opinion. I just wanted to make light of that event a) to provide an amusing anecdote and b) because I've always felt guilty that I was too obtuse to realize you were ill in that particular circumstance.
Posted by: Sterling on December 1, 2004 02:49 PMSterling responds: ROFL. I understand them well enough to know that the threat of violence is the only way to avoid actual violence. It's called "brinkmanship".
Are you rolling on the floor laughing at me? Or is it the idea of nuclear war? ;) well in any event it's nice to see international relations summed up as a staring contest backed up by the threat of total destruction.
ta ta,
-Quatto
That reminds me of what I was actually planning on saying. Sterling, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. "Deterrent" is probably a better term for what Iran is trying to get - they just want to be in on that oh-so-lovely Pax Americana. They probably just don't want to become the next Iraq, and with good reason.
Posted by: Dag on December 2, 2004 04:08 PMYeah. Ironically, their thinking is the same as yours - "if we don't get nukes with which to scare others, we're screwed."
Posted by: Dag on December 2, 2004 07:26 PMThe U.S. already has nukes. It's imperative that it act to prevent the spread of them further.
Posted by: Sterling on December 2, 2004 08:07 PMno way. everyone should have nukes. hunters all across the us of a should be able to launch nukes via remote control to hunt whales.
Posted by: SP on December 2, 2004 10:53 PMPerhaps you're not aware, Sterling, but the US (thanks to Bush) is working on building more nukes, and not just any nukes - bigger, better ones.
Posted by: Dag on December 3, 2004 05:47 AMI'm aware of it. I take it you think that's a bad thing?
Posted by: Sterling on December 3, 2004 08:21 AMI think Sterling¥s plan is absolutely spiffing. But there remains the question of how to make the nuclear threat to Iran a credible one. Are you proposing to nuke the whole country back into the Stone Age? Or just targetted bits of it? And once the bombs have fallen, is that Mission Accomplished? Or would there be some kind of follow-up? And if so, can the US really afford that?
Posted by: willem oomkens van ommeland on December 3, 2004 10:36 AMThis all reminds me of Nixon's (clearly a role model for this admin.) Vietnam gambit --" I'll pretend to be mad so that they'll think I'm capable of anything and ready to use nukes and they'll just fold at the negotiation table." Except of course in his case Nixon was pretending. Also it didn't work.
Actually Sterling, I think you're a racist. I think you think brown-skinned people can't be trusted to have nukes coz they're all doolally and capable of anything, wheras us white guys, well we're different, and much more trustworthy. Why would nukes be surer to fly (comment #5) when Iranians have them than weirdo fruitcake Commies who believe in world revolution?
And isn't anti-proliferation just another form of gun control writ large? Why isn't the NRA actively supporting Iran here? I certainly do.
Posted by: eurof on December 3, 2004 12:11 PMSterling: "It's imperative that it act to prevent the spread of them further."
Judging by that I thought you were concerned about more nukes being created, but apparently what you really meant is that nuclear proliferation is bad when anyone but the US is involved in it.
That makes sense, though. The US is so trustworthy. I'm sure there aren't any nations worried about being classified as an international threat by your nutjob President and preemptively nuked.
Posted by: Dag on December 3, 2004 06:28 PMSomehow I missed that Eurof called me a racist the other day.
Eurof - There's some humor to be extracted from the spectacle of a Welshman who lives in Switzerland calling any American a racist. I assume you've seen a handful, but do you even know any black people? I'd be interested to know how many of the guests at your wedding would have failed the "brown paper bag test".
As for me, it was one year ago this past week that I moved out of the Greenville section of Jersey City - a large neighborhood which is about 40% black, 30% latino, 15% white and 15% "other" - I lived there for four years and managed to go without lighting any crosses. I lived in another mixed neighborhood in Jersey City for three years prior to that. If I had a problem with living among the "brown people", as you crudely phrased it, I would have moved across the river to Manhattan, with all the liberal hypocrites in their below-110th-St. white enclave. I've gone into the ballot booth and cast my vote for black candidates (not just Al Sharpton in the Virginia primary, Stefan!) and I expect to vote for Condi Rice for veep (or possibly president) in 2008.
I think the the twin decisions of the southern states to secede and of the northern states to prosecute the American Civil War were disastrously short-sighted. But I am an enthusiastic supporter of the 13th, 14th, 15th and 24th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
It's Islam that I don't care for. I don't think any non-secular majority Muslim state should be permitted to obtain the bomb. The ship has obviously sailed on Pakistan, but the rest are still manageable. It's absolutely crucial that no more be tolerated. And in the event of another coup in Pakistan, or any uncertainty regarding the custody of its nuclear arsenal, we should shoot first and ask questions later. (Assuming the Indians don't beat us to the punch.)
When a state goes nuclear, it signals implicit agreement to a new set of rules - it is agreeing that its future survival will henceforth be very close to a binary condition. (France probably doesn't grasp this or it would never have gone nuclear.) I do not think there is any inherent moral distinction between the use of conventional and nuclear arms against a nuclear-armed state.
DAG - I have no problem with the United States building whatever kinds of nuclear weapons it wants. I think the U.S. should annex the Moon and deploy nukes there, frankly, to make its position truly unassailable (the Heinleinian "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" scenario notwithstanding). The United States is one of the most politically stable countries in the world, and has not engaged in a true war of conquest in over 150 years. (100 if you count the Spanish-American War. I don't.) To me it's a matter of stability - no politically unstable country should be permitted to develop nukes. Non-secular Islamic states are inherently unstable, and Koranically bent on conquest.
The South African example is instructive - anticipating a period of political instability, de Klerk ordered the dismantling of all of his country's nuclear weapons, and termination of the nuclear program. We may still pay a price for the Soviet Union's inability to do the same.
Posted by: Sterling on December 4, 2004 07:57 PMYou know Sterling, you'd save yourself lots of ridiculing by Eurof if you'd simply agree to put a qualifier on your discomfort with some bits of Islam. By not separating those who preach radical or extremist Islam from the millions of peaceful practitioners of that faith you do everyone, but mostly yourself, a great disservice. Maybe you're just being lazy by not writing "Islamic radicals" and granted, you make the distinction between secular and non-secular states. But I've seen you demonize Islam before in the broadest terms. Call them jihadists, or proponents of Sharia or whatever you like, but at least recognize the vast majority of Muslims are no more dangerous that bible-thumping Baptists or pious Catholics. If you can't see that, then frankly you are a bigot and deserve not only our ridicule, but our contempt as well.
Posted by: Marc on December 5, 2004 01:11 PMand just because you lived in a mixed neighborhood in jersey (because you wanted to save rent money) doesnt mean you arent a racist.
Posted by: x on December 5, 2004 03:59 PMX - That's true, but it does mean I'm not "allergic" to minorities, like a lot of white liberals seem to be.
Marc - It's astonishing to me how it's fine to bash Christians following the U.S. presidential elections, but it's still a social faux pas to express a negative opinion of Islam.
Let's be completely clear: violent extremism is a necessary product of Islam - the Koran demands it. A person who takes the New Testament and the Gospels of Christ seriously and literally will be moved to join the Peace Corps or open a soup kitchen or donate their wealth to the poor, and will seek to spread Christianity through good works and ministry. A person who takes the Koran seriously and literally will be moved to kill unbelievers, treat women as chattel, mutilate petty criminals and seek to spread Islam by any means necessary. And you know what? A lot more people take a literal approach to the Koran than the New Testament.
I'm not making this up, and I'm not even talking about Sharia wackos. My education provided me with a basic knowledge of the New Testament, and since 9/11 I have sought to understand the Koran, as well. Some people respond that not everything in the Koran is bad. That's true. It's also true that Hitler built a hell of a nice highway system. It's irrelevant - the bad chases out the good.
It's a backward religion - a huge, violent cult - and its spread needs to be vigorously opposed.
Everyone's so worried about about the American hegemon - but the United States has no interest in conquering the world. And as for the consequences of "Americanization" of world cultures - the worst you can say about it is that people are eating too much fast food. Compare that to the thousands of men and women deliberately mutilated by the Taliban in Afghanistan, representatives of a cult that truly does wish to conquer the world.
Posted by: Sterling on December 5, 2004 04:24 PMallergic according to who? thats just a bunch of bullshit, an attempt at creating a subconcious frame, which is what conservatives are really good at. manipulating language to create false truths.
Posted by: x on December 5, 2004 05:00 PMLook, you can whine all you want about it, X, but the likely truth is that the three most liberal cities on the east coast - Boston, New York and Washington - are the most racially segregated in the whole country.
For what it's worth I owned that house in Jersey City, I didn't rent. I moved there partly because it had been the "old neighborhood" where my grandmother grew up, but mostly because there was a federally funded light rail project going in that I knew would have a lifting effect on home values. I lived there four years and I quadrupled my investment.
Most of my Manhattanite friends and co-workers - white and black alike - thought I was insane and risking my life by living there. I later started a blog to try to convince them of the error of their ways.
Posted by: Sterling on December 5, 2004 05:21 PMi pointed the way out. i offered to take away the shovel. but he just keeps digging...
Posted by: Marc on December 5, 2004 05:25 PMOh no, I may face "ridiculing by Eurof" if I don't do as you suggest. Let me fill you in - Eurof will remain a mewling little pain in the ass regardless of what position I take on any topic.
I usually do use the word "jihadist" to describe the more psychotically agressive adherents of Islam, but that doesn't mean I let the rest of the religion off the hook.
Posted by: Sterling on December 5, 2004 05:31 PMoh i'm sure you actually revel in Eurof's ribbing. what would Moriarty be without Sherlock Holmes? i'm just a little dismayed that just like Holmes' nemesis, you have a considerable yet corrupted intellect as evidenced by your prejudice against millions of people just because they're Muslim. or in your words members of "a backward religion - a huge, violent cult." i'm sorry, but that's not only plain wrong, but also very scary. christ, if it's really that bad why aren't you supporting rounding them up now to be gased? a bullet for each would be too expensive.
Posted by: Marc on December 5, 2004 06:04 PMi'm not whining. youre just full of shit. new york and and boston are super integrated, at least when youre not part of a social group like financial analysts, prosecutors and upper east side / back bay brahmins. washington i dont know much about, other than having two asian friends from there, one korean the other viet. their perception of racism in that area was that it came from the virginia fuckhead rednecks, not from the d.c. educated whities. and san francisco, the other remaining bastion of sanity in this country, is pretty damn multi. i grew up in nyc, went to a co-op leftist nursery school with kids of all colors, religions cultures and ethnicities. went to a private french high school that was as diverse as the u.n. most of my friends growing up were muslim african kids whose only passion for conquest was for pussy; they didnt discriminate either, knowing that no matter what color she is its always pink on the inside.
Posted by: x on December 5, 2004 06:08 PMSort of like The Gong Show, it's Wanker Time: Sterling, you doofus, measured by the strict definition of city boundaries, Cleveland is the most segregated large city in the United States. The myth that lower Manhattan is some hippie kibbutz makes me wonder how you could hold a job in financial services for more than three seconds, 'cause your research is for shit. Lower Manhattan is highly segregated by class only. We love the super rich regardless of their color.
Let's recall the 7 line was recommended to be placed on the Historic National Register because it traverses the most diverse ethic urban area in the history of the world.
And, big whoop, you were gentrifying Jersey City. That makes you such an anti-racist. And those numbers you threw out are true perhaps because Boro 6 six is massively segregated, with the non-whites perching to the eastern edge where they could carve out ghettoes along the turnpike and among the chemical plants?
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 5, 2004 06:49 PMActually, Sterling sweetheart, I don't know why Americans should be less susceptible to being racists. How amusing that you know exactly the racial makeup of where you live/d. Perhaps you think about it a lot. And of course you like Condi; she's whiter than you are, an Auntie Tom-etta.
Historically, of course, Americans have been MORE institutionally racist than almost any other developed country I can think of, with the possible exception of Germany (the Nazi thing spoiled an otherwise largely good record) and of course the Sarf Effrikens: it was only 20 years or so after you that they got rid of their own version of your segregation. Not really a long time. I've asked you many time to comment on the fact that the red states in what we call your silly country are largely ex-slave states and the current republicans the heirs of Lincoln's enemies (yes, the parties changed names in the early 1900s and I'm not going into it) and I haven't heard a good reason why this is so. The French, by the way, are much much less racist than you.
The swiss aren't racists; they distrust all foreigners equally whatever race they are, and prefer their cows. More species-ist, in that sense. The welsh never had a chance to be properly racist before they were conquered by those chinless fucking Normans who went on to found your instutionally racist country, but after having been the blacks of the United Kingdom for all these years they may be less likely to be nasty to others when they rule the world. Or more. We don't know yet.
So I'm not sure where the humour can be extracted from a Swiss-resident Welshman calling an American a racist. Perhaps the humour is to be found in his eminent suitability to make such a charge. Or perhaps it was another one of your amusing but meaningless rhetorical flights of fancy.
PS: if you were to suggest a different course of action, one that did not involve the killing of possibly millions of innocents I would be a bit more forgiving of you. I often fancy there is a little Iranian girl a bit like my own daughter living somewhere in Tehran, and to hear you seriously suggesting that she should die according to one of your little theories of international relations, makes it hard to have a lot of sympathy. I sometimes wonder whether you really think things through. . .
99 - "Boro6" referred to Hudson County, NJ, not New Jersey as a whole. If you don't believe Manhattan is segregated, I encourage a thirty block walk up Amsterdam Avenue. So your contention is that Cleveland is more segregated than the cities I list? The conservative bastion of Cleveland? Haha. Thanks for making my point for me - the place has been under almost uninterrupted Democrat rule for generations. Dennis Kucinich is a past mayor of Cleveland.
X - Fifteen or twenty years ago, P.J. O'Rourke mocked the absurd level of segregation in DC by coining the phrase "white pipeline" to refer to the neighborhoods in northwest DC around Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues. Aside from some gentrification on the east side of Capitol Hill, little has changed since then. Boston is almost unbelievably segregated - it's sos segregated that poor whites and blacks even live in different slums.
Marc - Just because their religion is bad doesn't mean the people are unredeemable. Challenge me on the facts. Where am I wrong?
It's nothing short of astonishing to me that you liberals aren't railing against Islam at every turn. Hello? Women's rights? Gay rights? Freedom of expression? The Dixie Chicks got all sorts of sympathy from the left when southerners boycotted them, they even had the audacity to suggest it was infringement on their freedom of speech. But then Theo Van Gogh gets KILLED and all I hear with my left ear is the chirping of crickets.
Posted by: Sterling on December 5, 2004 07:36 PMEurof wrote: "The French, by the way, are much much less racist than you."
Hahahaha. Hahahahaha. Tell that to the Algerians. Tell that to the 60+ unarmed black Ivorian protesters the French Army mowed down two weeks ago when they fired into a crowd. Tell it to Alfred Dreyfus, who saw the modern incarnation of anti-semitism take form in France before spreading to Germany.
And I take it that the number of guests at your wedding darker than a brown paper bag was zero?
As for that spurious Confederacy comparison, I think you'll find that the red states tend to have a higher percentage of the descendants of early English, Scots-Irish and German colonists. The blue states tend to have more people primarily descended from Irish Catholic, Italian, Polish, Russian, Jewish, etc. immigrants of the mid/late 19th and early 20th centuries. So it's not merely the parties which have changed, it is the ethno-demographics of the coastal states themselves. The red states vote more consistently in line with traditional American political values - ironically the values which made America so attractive to immigrants in the first place.
Posted by: Sterling on December 5, 2004 07:58 PMHow droll. In the top comment Sterling claims the US is segregated, and proves the point I made. In the next he tries to argue the French are more racist than the Americans. Being an internet troll obviously interests you far more than consistency does, but as that particular quality is the hobgoblin of the small minded, I won't make too much of it.
You make no sense. You also miss the most egregious examples of Froggy racism, the 1968 or whenever anti-Algerian Paris pogrom, and you should have pointed out that the US has no mainstream institutionally racist political party unlike les Crapauds in the Front National and J-M le Pen et al. Honestly, do I have to hold both sides of the argument? Have you ever read Schachnovella, by Stefan Zweig? Of course not; you're monumentally ignorant.
As it is, if you fight a war against Algerians, or whichever side of the Cote d'Ivoirean civil war the French are on, odds are good that the majority of people you're going to kill will be brownish Algerians or generally black Cote d'Ivioreans. Similarly your brave soldiers in Iraq tend to shoot fewer white people than they do Iraqis; I don't take that as proof they are anti-Arab, per se. This is very much a pot-kettle situation.
I'll give you Dreyfus. And then set it against the liquidation of the Injuns, slavery, the rolling back of emancipation in the late 1800s-early 1900s, Jim Crow, and segregation within living memory. As you pointed out, places like DC are still effectively segregated, and when I lived there 2/3rd was off limits to honkies. There's so much more.
I did not make a comparison with the Confederacy, but rather implied it is still with us. You are right that "The red states vote more consistently in line with traditional American political values" - racism is one of them, and they're undeniably consistent. And I think that historically, large portions of the immigrants who were attracted to the US were actually white. All the ones of a different colour tended to come packed in 6 by 2 foot spaces and linked by chains.
Posted by: eurof on December 5, 2004 08:37 PMSorry, I forgot to play your "I know more black people than you" game. What are you -- a Virginian Ali G.? No, I don't think there were many very dark-skinned people at my wedding, thanks for asking. Lots of off-white, more British sunburned pink, a few changed colour in the evening to green and greeks as a rule are quite pale so they let the side down quite a bit. I suppose when I lived in jamaica I knew lots of black people and wanted to be black so much I called myself "brown-boy", but I was only 4 so it doesn't count.
Yegods, how can I compare with a Republican who lives south of Mason Dixon and who doesn't want to change the segregationist Alabaman constitution because its only vestigial and who wants to nuke brown people who can't be trusted with weapons because they might use them on white folks in Virginia? My shame is overwhelming.
Posted by: eurof on December 5, 2004 08:48 PM"Just because their religion is bad doesn't mean the people are unredeemable. Challenge me on the facts."
Great logic that is. I'm sure that's what they said during the Spanish Inquisition when they were sticking a hot poker up somebody's backside.
I agree there are major backward elements to Islam. It was founded a good half millennium after Christendom which was just as backward 500 years ago. Maybe they need just as long to get to the happy Christian-bashing point where we are today.
Posted by: Marc on December 5, 2004 10:18 PMSterling:
1. Because Cleveland is heavily democratic doesn't mean you aren't an idiot. Your assertion about New York being one of, if not the most, segregated city in the country was wrong. I was just pointing out a factual inaccuracy. I don't really give a shit about Cleveland, but if you want take a poke at them, let's wait for some do gooder from Shaker Heights defend them. In the meantime, try to come up with a more sensible argument for how New York, a city that maintains resources for translation of city services for over one hundred different languages, is more segregated than Richmond, a city were fluency in English is a challenge for most of its residents. Manhattan is no more segregated than any other affluent enclave I have managed to sneak my way into (liberal arts private college, etc.). And I say with easy confidence that it is far more welcoming of affluent non-whites than any other city in the country.
2. I never said I like Islam. I also never said I was real fond of Christianity. You are trying to establish a hierarchy of morality in organized religion, which is a waste of time for me. Van Gogh being murdered is not worse, or different, from the murder of a doctor who performs legally permissable medical services. Both are abhorrent. Let's nuke the populations who espouse such hateful logic, m'kay? But when you detonate all the missles under the asses of the terriorists living in the heartland, do it on a day when the wind is blowing west, since California, by dint of having elected a Nazi sympathizers as governor, deserves the fallout more than us.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 5, 2004 10:40 PMAren't the Greeks dark-skinned people? Or was that just their body hair? Most wore moustaches, and the men had full-on beards.
Sterling, If you were to rail against all Christians every time an abortion doctor gets shot or the Lord's Resistance army shoots a Ugandan or the Kosovoan Serbs off some Albanians, then you'd come across as a bit less biased. You'd also have to condemn all the jews every time an Israeli soldier kills a 10-year old girl.
Posted by: Stefan Geens on December 5, 2004 10:47 PMStefan - Maybe I do rail against Christians every time an abortion doctor gets shot. I could be wrong, but I think it's happened fewer than 10 times in the last fifteen years. The most consistently bloody places on Earth are where Islamic turf meets anything else - people get killed there on a regular basis.
Eurof - Race and racism are complicated. Most people naturally prefer the company of people of their own ethnicity - does that make them bigots? I don't think it does. So I wasn't calling Manhattanites racists, I was making light of them for failing to live up to their own standards, to the point of demonstrating that even a right-winger like me does a better job of "mixing" than most leftie Manhattanites. I think their politics are more fashion than a matter of earnest opinion.
You want me to ITEMIZE French perfidy and racism? I might as well be tasked with counting the grains of sand on a beach. Don't sell when it's already sold.
As for the so-called "liquidation" of the Indians, it never happened. There was no genocide, there was no liquidation - many were killed in the Indian Wars but they're still here. There are a couple orders of magnitude more Amerindians in the U.S. today than Jews in France.
Here's my favorite part of your reply: "Have you ever read Schachnovella [sic], by Stefan Zweig? Of course not; you're monumentally ignorant."
I think you mean "Schachnovelle", dipshit. I saw the movie, does that count?
And oh, did I offend you by impugning the integrity of your klan-meeting of a wedding guestlist? If you can't take it, don't accuse somebody else of being a racist.
Posted by: Sterling on December 6, 2004 02:02 AM"So I wasn't calling Manhattanites racists, I was making light of them for failing to live up to their own standards"
again i ask, which manhattanites are you referring to. because i was born and raised here and ALL of the ones i know are more mixed than you would care to know about.
Tell you what X - let's settle on a bar for you to go to next Friday, and you do a race tally of the crowd. Because my experience is that, not including east Asians, crowds are rarely mixed to even the slightest degree. So you'll either find a bar filled with blacks, or a bar filled with whites, or a bar filled with latinos, but you'll almost never find one that's mixed.
That's what I'm talking about.
See, this is one of the main issues I have with New York - people socialize in very tight circles. It's very stratified. Maybe it's just a function of New York being so big, or maybe it's because people who move to Manhattan from elsewhere tend to be self-promoters, but people in Manhattan tend to draw most of their friends from the same racial group, the same income group, the same age group and usually very similar career groups as their own. Perhaps it seems inconceivable to you, but in other towns and cities in the U.S., people tend to draw their friends and acquaintances from a much broader array of backgrounds.
If you walk into the diner in the town I grew up in in Jersey, you will find people sitting around tables actually disagreeing with each other about politics and not screaming about it. You will find attorneys sitting across tables from guys who install tile for a living. I've seen a congressman sitting down to have lunch with the guy who's winterizing his boat.
Do you think Jerrold Nadler has lunch with the parking attendant at his apartment building? I don't.
It's much the same here in Richmond. So far one of my best new friends is an Indian-American doctor in his third year of residency at VCU Medical Center. I never would have met him in New York. Just never would have happened. And before you jump ugly on me, I never heard any of my friends in NYC say anything like, "My friend Mahesh, who's a doctor..." Maybe one of them would have said, "There's this Indian guy in my building who's a doctor..." but that's about the extent of it.
Manhattan is a surprisingly insular place.
Posted by: Sterling on December 6, 2004 04:16 AMX - Here's an interview with Tavis Smiley where he makes a very similar argument to mine:
WHAT'S MORE DIVERSE THESE DAYS ó NPR OR PRESIDENT BUSH'S CABINET?
Bush's Cabinet. It is ironic that a Republican President has an Administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-elite network.
(Plucked this off Instapundit.)
Posted by: Sterling on December 6, 2004 04:28 AMWait a second, what bar are we Asians drinking at? Or are we too busy cleaning your guys' houses and caring for the grandfolks you middle class white peeps never visit?
BTW, my very good friend Ashish, who likes his curry so damn hot, it'd send you to the hospital, hangs with me, a Filipina, and any other person (black, white, red, yellow, brown, purple) who doesn't ask him if he owns a 7-Eleven or is a software programmer.
Posted by: michelle on December 6, 2004 04:36 AMWait a minute -- east Asians don't count as non-whites, but Indians do? Huh? Did you know some Indians are Aryan, Sterling? I learned that from my Sikh ex-girlfriend. Whoo hoo! I slept with one of 'em. I see you a darkie friend and raise you a sexual partner!!
What about Jews? White or not?
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 6, 2004 05:01 AMOh, and duh, you would have never met Mahesh here 'cause he lives in Virginia. Sometimes I wonder about you, Sterling.
Anyway, remember, the bars you went to, if your photographic evidence is any measure, were B&T bars on Ludlow. Of course they were filled with insular assholes -- they filled with people who don't live in Manhattan.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 6, 2004 05:05 AM"I see you a darkie friend and raise you a sexual partner!!"
You are such a dork.
Posted by: michelle on December 6, 2004 05:06 AMyoure so stupid frankly, that you really make me laugh. the bars i go to are all "mixed". i was at a bar last night. a small bar called joe's bar on 6th and b. there were 3 black people in one corner, one of which was gay. there was a lesbian couple, one of which was apparently middle eastern. there was a hipster white guy with an also hipster asian guy. the barmaid was a 6'4" blonde. there were some guys in the back playing pool, one was wearing a harvard t shirt, the other one was latino. the pool trophys and plaques on the wall have a variety of anglo and latino names engraved on them.
this is really a stupid excersise because its like this all over the city. i think the truth is closer to what you stated in an earlier post, that we seek out like people. i seek out people who are open to and interested in other cultures, while at the same time having their own very strong cultural identity. people who want to share their their culture without feeling the need to impose it on others. while you are a racist (maybe without knowing it as some people are gay without knowing it) you seek out places and people who are like you. maybe thats why your experience of new york was one of segregation. but i assure you, people like you are in the minority here. and you know what? we're glad you left.
Posted by: x on December 6, 2004 05:56 AMNo, seeing the movie doesn't count. You have to read the book; the original German would be best of course, but I'm sure you would view learning a foreign language as an unpatriotic act. Anyway, the hero is forced at one point to play the world chess champion, an idiot savant called Sterling, sorry, Centovic; the hero is so demonstrably superior he begins to play both sides of the game, and a number of different ones in his head, simultaneously. I was just reminded of it as I was forced to supply you with arguments to try and defeat me.
Don't worry, I am not at all offended about my Klan wedding (the Cyclades are a fave hangout of the Klan), much more deeply amused. I should have had more black people at my wedding, but unlike you I don't support affirmative action. Stefan, Greeks are generally pale and indeed hairy.
Well, yes, you should list examples of French racism, but ones that are comparable to those of the Merkins; leave out the perfidy for now and you can do it in another post.
I think it not yet a matter of historical record that the Injuns died and were replaced voluntarily as the survivors thought it a wonderful idea to go to the reservations. Are you a holocaust denier as well as a racist? Oh my god, maybe you're anti-semitic, too. Sterling, really!
Posted by: eurof on December 6, 2004 08:06 AMI take it from the way this thread has developed - from Sterling¥s Modest Proposal to threaten Iran with war, to focus on the more burning issues of Sterling¥s gayness and racism - that there is broad agreement on the actual substance of his plan, apart from from Eurof, who seems not to understand what the plan is..
But between the lines - are you guys saying that Sterling¥s plan is somehow devalued by the fact that he is a gay racist? Don¥t the likes of him have an equal right to be heard? In rejecting him based on a supposition of his charcacter, are we not making the same mistake as the Europeans are making with Dubya?
Actually, the modest proposal has merit, as a jeu d¥esprit, although it is no more that that, still needing to be thought through in its details and consequences. But I guess nobody is really looking for a discussion on the substance.
Posted by: willem oomkens van ommeland on December 6, 2004 09:58 AMSterling¥s description of a segregated Manhattan strikes me as uncontroversial and obviously true. People everywhere like to get it together with "people like us". X¥s description of multiculti bars strikes me as equally true, and for the same reason. The question is how you define the "PLU" factor.
Do we know Sage 7¥s opinion on the Islamic religion? Is he for it, or does he tend, on balance, to prefer Christianity?
Posted by: willem oomkens van ommeland on December 6, 2004 10:13 AMWillem, the plan as far as i understand it was to threaten to nuke Iran if it tried to get a bomb, and then it sort of broadened to nuking them a little bit to show we weren't bluffing.
I don't think it matters to the quality of the idea whether Sterling is a gay, racist anti-semite or not; this is lucky, because he is evidently all of those things. I approach his idea solely on its merits qua an idea and its consequences, my conclusion being it is probably a bad idea.
Being mean to Sterling and taunting him is its own reward, and is purely a sideline. Have a go yourself, he loves the attention. For a special thrill, ask him about military service as well.
Posted by: eurof on December 6, 2004 01:06 PMOomkens van Ommeland, Willem
reading comprehension: F
hilarity: A+
Posted by: X on December 6, 2004 02:57 PMEurof - What you describe was all in the movie. It was pretty funny that you misspelled "Schachnovelle" in the same paragraph where you accused me of being "monumentally ignorant", don't you think? Also, "Ku Klux" is actually a bastardization of the Greek word "kuklos", so who knows where they might turn up?
I've got three years of Spanish-language training, though my skill has almost entirely lapsed. I even took a semester of French in college - ick. German I find almost completely impenetrable, but on my trips to the Netherlands I've found the Dutch language to be very agreeable and easy to pick up.
I'm not sure why you believe that Iran cannot be deterred through the threat of force from developing a nuclear capability. To my mind it's the only thing that has any chance of working.
X & 99 - Yawn. You're both deluded and tiresome.
Willem - Thanks. I think.
Michelle - I knew this one Chinese-American girl who'd spent a little too much time drinking at the fountain of ivory tower academia. She was forever searching out racial grievances committed against east Asians. I said to her one day that I didn't believe that east Asians suffered any substantial discrimination in the U.S., in part because they assimilated so easily. She went nuts! "Asians are NOT proxy whites!" she told me. I smiled and said that "proxy whites" was a delightful term, and that I was glad she shared it with me because it perfectly described Asians in the U.S.
We also had great discussions about the word "oriental". My argument was that the Chinese refer to westerners as "foreign devils", and the Japanese call us barbarians (gaijin) or "big noses" - all of which are clearly pejorative. The term "oriental" means, literally, "from the east", and is not pejorative. To this she grimaced and said, "I still don't like it."
Posted by: Sterling on December 6, 2004 03:31 PMWhat exactly, Sterling, is the "threat of force"? I think everyone except for Poland thinks we will invade them if they look at us funny (except for the Saudis, but they're asshole buddies of the Bushes), so it would seem the "threat of force" doctrine is already, and has been, in place for the past three years. Yet democracy has not spread like honey over the world, and North Korea and Iran seem to have accelerated their programs during this time.
Since the "threat of force" doctrine is hard to qualify, how can countries be expected to construct a framework of dialogue with us? The doctrine was applied to Iraq, ostensibly, but since we had poor intelligence, and no WMD's were found as a consequence, if I were Iran, I'd have to assume that unilateral and pre-emptive strike plans were being developed in a mostly schizophrenic way (Iraq said they didn't have WMD's, they still got invaded, and it turns out they weren't lying -- what could Iran possibly say to stave off an invasion?), and figuring that the possibility might exist against me, I'd arm myself to the teeth, since, taking a page from the US book, would think that the MAD policy of the 60's was the way to prevent an ideologically motivated invasion.
On the 'proxy white' issue: have you ever spent time with a group of east Asians where you were the clear minority? I did this a lot when I was dating a Vietnamese woman (look at me! dating my way across the subcontinent! And, yes, Michelle, trot out your Yellow Fever comment). I don't think their notion of Other vis-a-vis whites was any different than when I was the minority in a group of African-Americans (haven't dated one of them yet -- I don't know any married black women).
Clearly there is a point to be made that any 20th century immigrant populations are posturing a little when they claim the mantle of suffering due to racial or ethnic discrimination -- compared to blacks in America -- but for east Asians, this has more historical credibility as you travel west, since there are more pernicious examples of subjugation on par with slavery.
But cultural identity is cultural identity. Putting up with 'goomba' and 'guido' is tiresome, but I never feel the need to get really pedantic about it, since I grew up in an area where I was in the ethnic majority. So I figure ignorance is ignorance, and I let people display it as they see fit. Others have less patience.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 6, 2004 04:07 PMSterling: Why do rednecks take umbrage at the phrase? Is it not literally true in many instances? Likewise, why should a black person be offended at 'darkie'? Or an Italian at 'WOP'? Or a gay person at 'pickle smoker'? They're all pretty literal. Boy, those Asians sure are inscrutable, gettin' all mad at a literal term.
Posted by: Mr. 99th Percentile on December 6, 2004 04:12 PMSterling,
"Going nuts" isn't my style but you haven't a clue about east Asians suffering "any substantial discrimination" in America. You're a middle class white guy who tracks his white roots back 500 umpteen or so years, how the hell would you know the first thing about discrimination? Oh that's right, you read about it and have colored friends. My mistake.
It wasn't long ago when signs were posted "No Dogs or Filipinos Allowed". Now, I don't have a cross to bear like your Chinese friend nor am I bitter about being called Oriental but if you say it to my face, I'm kicking you in the nuts (not going nuts).
Posted by: michelle on December 6, 2004 05:08 PM99, how many times do I need to call you a dork? All right. Why don't you just post your sexual diversification portfolio on your blog. (Sterling needs some good fiction to read while he's on the toilet.) And do open up the comments. I'd like to pee in your yard.
Sincerely,
Flip