Friends, President Trump is very, very smart! He tells us so on a regular basis. Whether the men advising him are similarly bright is an open question. It took the President's national security team a surprisingly long time to figure out that, if Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, with its navy at the bottom of the sea, then we, with the world's biggest navy by far, could do so too! And no country is more dependent on maritime trade passing through the Strait than...Iran!!! That's what we call "checkmate" in strategic terms. In other words, we can obliterate the Iranian economy any time we like. Maybe that time should have been back when this conflict began. Be that as it may, we're blockading Iran now, and I'm optimistic that this will force the Islamists to talk turkey, at long last. I mean, for the U.S. of A., mounting a blockade is a piece of cake. We can do this stuff all day long for as many days as it takes. The best part is that, not only have we exposed Iran as a paper tiger, but we've done the same for every country in the world, including our erstwhile allies in Europe. Simply put, the world runs on maritime trade, and WE RULE THE WAVES!!! Get it, Trump haters???
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trumps-blockade-breaking-iran-and-european-elites-are-angry
In other news, babies are smelly and obnoxious. This helps to explain why so few people are having them these days, but, as I've been saying for years, there's a lot more to it. People invest their time and energy in whatever they believe truly matters, and our messed up egotistical culture, such as it is, does not value parenthood. Until we fix that problem, the decline and fall of human fertility will be the story of the century, the millenium, and quite possibly the punchline in the epitaph of homo sapiens, when the time comes.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4527119/fertility-crisis-cultural-problem/
Dr. Waddy from Jack: If we had imposed the blockade without first ravaging Iran's navy, air force , air defenses and its missile sites our blockading ships would have had to take on an unsinkable aircraft carrier (Iran itself) and some escort ships and subs capable of sinking ships even the size of carriers. I don't think our Navy has ever forgotten the harrowing land borne destruction it endured at Okinawa. Britain's land based air arm checkmated adventurous Hitler's plan to invade by sea. The Argentines used land based planes to seriously damage the Brits in 1982.
ReplyDeleteI think President Trump is , on balance, handling this war deftly. He's got a Navy which affords him a measure of military superiority comparable in many ways to that of the Royal Navy in the 19th century. The stock market and oil markets are, as of today, displaying strong optimism and they are institutions which are much dependent upon well advised accomodations to political , military and geographical realities.
Oh of course, the more success our President builds on unprecedented successes , the more they " well, just hate him! He's so icky!" They are petulant brats throwing an unrelenting tantrum.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: There are people who shouldn't have kids; for one reason or another they are simply not up to it; in many cases they are not to blame for that or it is simply not their choice of how to live their lives. Many among them then wisely choose not to have children and they act responsibly and to the benefit of themselves, childhood and our society. But some act recklessly and the damage is often profound.
ReplyDeleteWorking in prisons I was particularly struck by what a renowned prison educator and psychiatrist told me: "Think what you want about inmates; yes, emphatically, society must be protected against those who choose to victimize the innocent but , nonetheless,TAKE THIS TO THE BANK: they have ALL been abused, some unspeakably so, as children."
I know this person had far more creditable knowledge on this than I do but my close experience of 20 years with felons bids me disagree with a small part of that: I think there are some among us who, regardless of their upbringings , are just plain dirty bastards (and I use that epithet only in its modern sense). From what I've read of Charles Manson, it appears to me he had a fairly stable upbringing. And other senseless monsters like school shooters; it is futile for us to try to fathom the workings of their fevered minds in an effort to work prevention. We must defend against them and confine them for good.
Abuse as a child , society must say, doesn't excuse them from personal responsibility for crimes they commit;society cannot and should not let them run riot. Anarchy has hideous manifestations and consequences ; eg.human trafficking and sales of deadly drugs Much of that abuse probably came from parents who did not want the responsibility of parenthood. Would then, that they not had conceived them(?) I pain to say it.
My own experience of parenthood is of a phenomenon of indescribable sublimity. Having grown up in a mostly stable environment and watching my siblings having kids I was naturally aware of parent/child love. But I never realized the redeeming STRENGTH and BEAUTY of it until I've lived it as a parent; it stunned me beyond measure.
Perhaps Western civilization's best benefit is personal freedom. We have modern examples of governments which have forcefully imposed laws limiting the number of children a nuclear family may have. That is a dreadful measure. We have a heretofore unimaginably plural civilization which offers responsible adults myriad paths in life. Can we, should we, limit those opportunities in order to build population? You have expressed plausible reasons why a decline in population could be disastrous but might it not be something we must hazard before we can summon the will to remedy it?
Above I should have said ". . . justify the will to remedy it?" Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Had we imposed a blockade without our first ravaging Iran's navy, air force , missile sites and command structure we could have brought on our Navy intensely destructive forces.
ReplyDeleteIn late WWII our Navy faced a harrowing onslaught off of Okinawa from land based air attack.from a desperate Japan. True , it featured suicide bombers but who is to say an Iranian "regime" which celebrates doctrinally urged suicide might have done the same ? Anyway the kamikaze were nominally guided missiles and Iran had plenty of them. Too, the Iranian Navy did have some ships maybe capable of sinking even aircraft carriers and they had conventional subs. In WWII a non nuclear American sub sank the enormous Japanese carrier Shinano.
An Iran previously unengaged would then have been an unsinkable aircraft carrier.The land based RAF in WWII prevented the intended seaborne Nazi seaborne invasion of Britain. In1982, the Argentines did much damage to the British fleet in the Falklands with land based planes.
So I think President Trump and his defense team did best by destroying most of Iran's antiship capabilities before considering imposing a blockade.
I think our President and his defense team have deftly commanded our forces in this war. Today, the stock market and the oil market have displayed much optimism and they are institutions for which very well informed advice is vital.
". . . might not have done the same?"Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: My bad. I reviewed Manson's biography and his childhood was appalling.He was an implausible example for what I still think to be true though; some nasty criminals were raised in relatively good homes. I think I knew some.
ReplyDeleteQuite right, Jack: there are plenty of childless people who have good reasons not to have kids. Their choice is one we can understand and respect. There are plenty of other people who ARE having kids but would probably be wiser to refrain. I daresay, in fact, that most of the people having kids in modern Western societies are not the ideal parents, but are, more accurately, the least disciplined and prudent among us. And that's, I would argue, the bigger problem in the end: not the numerical lack of children, but the tendency of the intelligent and responsible not to have them, and the tendency of the moronic and debauched to have lots!
ReplyDeleteJack, I can see the necessity of suppressing all of Iran's military forces, including its navy, but I don't believe that navy would have been any impediment to enacting a blockade against Iranian trade anytime we liked. I mean, if we were afraid of fast attack boats or anti-ship missiles, we could have intercepted Iran's tankers and freighters on the high seas. No, we chose to leave their economy be for other reasons. Probably we assumed the shock and awe of our military campaign would naturally cause any rational government to come to terms. Well, there's the rub: the mullahs aren't rational.
I won't get too deep into the nature versus nurture debate, except to agree with you that, in the end, it hardly matters, since we are all responsible for our actions regardless of the quality of parenting we received.
Re "the decline and fall of human fertility will be the story of the century, the millenium, and quite possibly the punchline in the epitaph of homo sapiens, when the time comes."
ReplyDeleteNo, "the story of the century, the millennium, and quite possibly the punchline in the epitaph of homo sapiens" is that homo sapiens never were sapiens at all!
That self-given label of homo sapiens is utter fake. The biggest lie ever!
At the core of homo sapiens is unwisdom (ie, madness) and so the human label of "wise" (ie, sapiens) is a complete collective self-delusion --- study the free scholarly essay “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room" ... https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” --- Dresden James
Once you understand that humans are "invisibly" insane (pink elephant people, see cited essay) you'll UNDERSTAND (well, perhaps) why they, especially their alleged experts, perpetually come up with myths and lies about everything ... including about themselves (their nature, their intelligence, their origins, their "supreme" status, etc).
Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?
"Growing up means realizing that none of the worst villains are in prison." --- Caitlin Johnstone, Independent Journalist (https://archive.ph/zDqoh)
"The world is the way that it is because most people do not care enough (even if they SAY they want things to be different) to change it through their actions." --- Mark Passio, Spiritual Teacher
Art, what you say is certainly very plausible. I've long had a sneaking suspicion that human beings were just self-glorified apes and all our mortal antics are more or less equally ridiculous, but you can see, surely, why people, including me, shrink from admitting it... Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you're right that people are insane/dumb. Then what? Do go on, good Sir.
ReplyDelete