- America tortures and says it is wrong… Or is it? The hub bub over ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ reflects that legalistic shift between the spirit of a thing and the letter of a thing. The Atlantic has a stirring article on the topic that pokes at some of the recent statements by President Obama, Senator King and others. Somehow this 600 page behemoth of a report (that no senator or congressman has likely actually finished) allowed us to distance ourselves from…well, ourselves. During the earliest stages of the War on Terror (TM) we were an angry nation who dove headlong into the mess that is Afghanistan because we believed the source of the attacks were there and we were going to get the bad guys by any means necessary. Thirteen years later, out comes the white paint and the whole mess is cleaned away with a handful of symbolic ‘we went too far’ guys trotted out in front of the cameras to make sure we can have plausible deniability of a systemic problem. Nope. Not buying it. This is a systemic problem. We have a lot of those here, and the sooner we are willing to acknowledge and address instead of acknowledge and move on, we’ll be a lot better off.
- As the semester winds down I am surprised at how little some students actually care about learning. They want to have fun and get good grades but the whole learning stuff is beneath them. They know what they need to be successful and satisfied (there’s that word again) with their lives. Of course they do, because the TV tells them they do and their limited realities don’t require a whole lot more than what is already provided in 140 character or picture form. Sadly, this is a losing battle at times and a battle that can be won at others. Also sadly, I take every loss to heart.
Day: December 12, 2014
1680. Loose Thoughts
- Finished watching the Cardinals win and apparently lose at the same time–a pyrrhic victory if you will. They beat the Rams to move to a 10 win season, but lost yet another QB. He hopped off the field under his own one-footed power and was carted back to the x-ray area. Who knows what happens next. This is why the Cards always keep three QBs on the roster. While I would love to see them get to the Super Bowl, I would love even more to see it happen with a 4th string QB. That’d prove a lot about the Jets–follow me here. The Jets are where they are because they don’t have a top CB tandem. One of the two they could’ve had is a Cardinal because the Jets wouldn’t pay. The other is a Patriot because the Jets wouldn’t pay. Both are likely to be in the Superbowl (unless the Broncos and Packers have anything to say about it). In other words, Fire John Idzik.
- Been listening to a lot of people complain about Obama’s speech about racial tensions in America. He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. He didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. He did say all the things we didn’t want to admit. Fact: a lot of people feel treated unfairly. I think it is silly to deny that, or worse discredit the feelings of those people by showing isolated examples of racial unity in the face of overwhelming evidence of constant and pervasive racial discrimination. On the other hand, that’s the American way. We are a country that disavows its flaws. We are the country of ‘let’s move on’.