Righteous Indignation

We Americans will always do certain things better than any other country. Neal Stephenson claimed that the things that we do best are pizza delivery, movies, and software. I guess that I could buy those, but I propose another. Righteous indignation. More specifically, our real specialty appears to be somewhat hypocritical righteous indignation.

Currently I have been reading about Russia/Georgia. In a nutshell, this appears to be the case of three sets of assholes (Bushie, Putie, and Saaskie) all trying to relive their elementary school playground days. Unfortunately, the civilians took the hit and all three of these morons are still in power.

Anyway, here in the US we have been decrying the inhumanity of the whole thing. It really doesn't matter who you feel is in the wrong as the leaders of Russia and Georgia both have the general morality of Tony Soprano. We in the blogosphere have been writing and commenting on the horribleness of the whole tawdry affair. The fact that we have four combat divisions squatting in Iraq doesn't seem ironic to a lot of folks.

Speaking as a doomer (actually, I am a member of that odd subcult, the smiley-face doomers, but more on that in a later post). I am always amused that folks haven't figured out that the big picture range of possibilities is continuing to get worse and that countries and empires invading folks and kicking their ass is becoming an increasingly popular modus operandi in international politics.

After all, we in America have been doing so quite frequently of late. (Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Beiruit, Somalia, Iraq I, Iraq 2). Come to think of it, since 1890, most of our wars have been "Wars of Choice". If you send in troops, and those troops kill people to make those folks do what you want them to do, I count that as a war.

So, I think that while we keep our righteous indignation alive (after all, you dance with who brung you), we should also strive to keep in mind that this means of solving problems will become increasingly popular and learn to deal with the fact that there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.

I am considering beginning a grading system on how well the ass-kicking, lunch eating it is done in each case. I will put together the grading criterion in the next couple of weeks, any suggestions will be appreciated.