Wednesday, November 09, 2005

McTANK Miscellany

In the category of stuff we knew but liberals won't wonder about: The Dept. of Defense says it has a problem recruiting from urban schools (ip) because the students are so undereducated they don't qualify even for the lowest standards of military entrance. (And to think, throughout history and around the world, the Army was always a last resort job option even for those whose only skill was breathing and marching. Although our modern military has made it a whole spectrum of specialties.) 

Twice as many young adults from rural areas as from urbania qualify to make it into the military. So the fact that the military is heavily skewed conservative apparently isn't because only conservatives join, but because so many people from the heaviest liberal zones are too stupid to get in. Gee that changes the perspective a bit, doesn' t it.

Especially when it's liberals always bragging about how conservatives are morons because the higher education in this country is held by a greater percentage of people who are liberal. Of course, the lowest education is also held by a greater percentage of people who are liberal, but for some reason that doesn't count.

This reminds me of how the Left is always saying that republicans are 'the rich' and they give admonition to everybody who is female, non-white, or poor that "believe me, republicans are not your friends" (because they are 'the rich'). Yet the Democratic leaders (John Kerry anyone?) and the people who most fervently drive the Left's propaganda and mass political efforts (Soros, Streisand, Fonda) are also obscenely rich.

What part of "you can't be a socialist-communist unless you share your OWN money with others who are poor" don't these people get? And what part of, "Those claiming to share your pain are living in a $40 million home in Beverly Hills, and the people who say they exist to help you clearly pity you and after 50 years you're still in poverty so remind me how they're helping you again?" don't the voters understand?

Humor: It's nice to know that in the contrast between another day in mundania and the insanity of world affairs, someone, somewhere, is doing something interesting (db). It's nearly 7am here. Do you know where your goat is?

You know about that bizarre tendency to label every American with their racial background prefixed. I think only the activists for African-American cared at first, but this got pushed on everybody, so now my buddy Lynne is Italian-American, for example, though she's never even been to italy, nor have her parents, and has no desire to label her nationality with her race. (In fact that is the one thing that America always had that almost no other country did: a national or country label that had no denotion to race. Personally I think that's a good thing.) To think that as a country we made this massive effort to remove "racial labels" and then came the campaign to sticky-note them all back on again. I am 15 nationalities, a true melting pot American. Can you imagine me trying to hyphenate myself in an introduction?

We now hear the insistence that "gay" not represent gay women (the term "lesbian" must be used). But wait, this comes in a funnier context or I wouldn't mention it: Safire, mascot for the NY Times, also says that the word "homosexual" is not to be used anymore, in part because, would you believe, "the term has been associated with deviance." Hello? Isn't this like saying "it's ok to be deviant from the norm because you're not really deviant from the norm."? So... instead of people being openly however they are and asking for acceptance of that (and I accept that!), they want to be repackaged in PR terms so they don't strike anybody as different? Now this would make perfect sense to me on a basic level, that all humans are equal so why fret about such differences, but this makes NO sense coming from special interest groups and publications which exist solely to define and support the difference between 'their' people and 'everybody else'.To me that's like saying, "On behalf of the Conservatives For Oklahoma association, I request that you no longer use the term "conservative" in connection with our members, because it might give people the idea that we are conservative." (Moreover, calling us Okies is definitely biased!)

But wait, there's so much more. Safire continues to note that being gay is "not about sex" but about "attitudes and culture." It's not about sex? WTF?! If I marry a man, I can have the identical attitude and culture as a woman who is living with a woman, so should I call myself a lesbian? What if my husband shares that attitude and culture? Is HE a lesbian? And what about that culture comment, does that imply that growing up with or living in a neighborhood with lesbians makes me a lesbian? The entire point of lesbians "singling out" themselves as their own group isn't because they share a love for jazz, or a liberal mindset, or a neighborhood, but because they innately mate with other women, and I don't see how pretending that is NOT the case is any service to them at all. 

To me this is the same kind of "we speak for you and we are helping you as your leaders" insulting BS that gets perpetuated on the black community by some of their leaders. I side with the mentality that says, "I am/do/feel X and I'm proud to be me so get outta my face about it!" Apparently if we call someone homosexual because they are homosexual, we are now insulting them. Alrighty then.

Meanwhile in the land of the free, home of the occasionally stupid, the Mayor of Las Vegas must have been having an Out-of-Jihadi experience during a recent interview when he first suggested they mutilate people for graffiti (cut off their thumbs) and then used as his backing logic the Guillotine in old France. (db) I'm trying to decide which of these associations is the worse example at this moment in world events.

The New York Civil Liberties Union vehemently opposes bag-searches on subways, which the city wants to implement to reduce the chance some terrorist will take a bomb onto a train. (Of course, if this is not done and a subway is blown up, it will be all George Bush's fault, for having dared wake up that morning.) They feel this is "an unjustifiable erosion" of personal rights. Ironically, if you would like to visit them to discuss their presentations, you have to be searched before getting in the door. (nys, cd) Boy that's walking what you talk eh. I admit I am a little confused about why (a) if it's injust on the subway, it isn't injust on planes, and (b) if it's injust even for legal or governing authorities, it wouldn't be injust for anybody (e.g., those who run rock concerts, or lead White House tours).

An American who grew up in Holland writes a nice essay in her blog about the change in political foundations that her family back in Europe seems to have gone through (worth reading):
Europeans reject the individualistic, direct, confident, and uncomplicated American that is George Bush, that is Ronald Reagan. Why? Because that is the person that left the Old World to seek a better opportunity across the Atlantic. Europeans could never really deal with these far-flung family members that came back with stories of big houses, big cars and an abundance of food that many in Europe did not know existed. Resentment, probably yes, self-reproach for not having been adventurous enough? Maybe. America represents a level of success and makeability that Europeans never had and to the extent they had it we will have to go back to the industrial revolution and before, to find it. That spirit has somehow left them and those left behind will go as far to jeopardize their own security in order to prove their point about America.

Humor: As any devout cat servant knows (as they say, dogs have owners--cats have staff), this poor German cat was simply stealing it so he could play it with for awhile before eating it. (db)

McTANK
http://mctank.blogger.com

No comments: