I have been going hammer and tongs at an idea lately, and it just isn't panning out well. I keep tripping over the "what-ifs" and they keep it from being ready to post.
More and more, I am getting jealous of folks like John Michael Greer, Jim Kunstler, or Dmitri Orlov, who seem to be able to deliver thoughtful and internally consistent posts on a routine basis. At best, I do OK, but their stuff always seem to shine.
While having this soapbox is a great thing, it also reminds me what hard work sitting down and writing well is. I think that it would have to be exhausting. Best I can do is hope for a batting average that would better fit a journeyman utility infielder.
Much of blogoland is some pretty low quality stuff, myself included. I think that we should applaud the good ones more than what we do currently.
2 comments:
Don't short sell yourself. I read you more than those other three. I like short, sweet, and to the point versus long, flowery dissertations.
All three of them pontificate by acting with supreme confidence and assuradness about subject matters that they have no clue.Repeat- No clue.
Greer drives me up the wall at times with his one book expertise. Notice how he has the bronze age Europe collapsing because a bunch guys show up on boats with javelins and the chariot guys cannot figure out what to do. He bases all this on one guys crackpot theories. That one of Egypts main opponents (the Libyans) were primarly armed with javelins/light throwing spears of course doesn't matter in the least.
Neither Greer, nor the crackpot author, can be bothered to ask "Where did all the invading hordes come from?" Why did they throw themselves into a loosing effort to go out and trash all these Empires? And you know they lost in the end because nobody really knows who they are. They trashed some places, lost in some others, and then had to break up when they could find no source of supplies.
And of course they never made it over to a number of other places where empires either collapsed or downsized without any help from the new super-javelin armed barbarians.
He then, as the other main example, brings in the Germans as the WW2 introducers of the gasoline fueled army. The only problem is that most of the German army was still horse drawn. It was the British and U.S. Armies which were the only completly mechanized armies of the war. So much for the gasoline distinction.
All of this he does to show that the U.S. is likely to face defeat in the next war because armies are often defeated when you least expect it. Well maybe. But most of the time armies, navies, etc. win when you expect them to. That's why underdogs winning stories are so popular.
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