200,000 March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, 51 years ago today.
http://t.co/3ieLpakmdl pic.twitter.com/3Zz1Z3yJuM
— NYT Archives (@NYTArchives) August 28, 2014
Adam Gopnik, in the New Yorker, “Does It Help to Know History?“:
… [T]he best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out. The advantage of having a historical sense is not that it will lead you to some quarry of instructions, the way that Superman can regularly return to the Fortress of Solitude to get instructions from his dad, but that it will teach you that no such crystal cave exists. What history generally “teaches” is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.…
The real sin that the absence of a historical sense encourages is presentism, in the sense of exaggerating our present problems out of all proportion to those that have previously existed. It lies in believing that things are much worse than they have ever been— and, thus, than they really are—or are uniquely threatening rather than familiarly difficult….
***********
That being said, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
raven
Mornin Joe is pretty funny supporting Obama sandbagging ISIS.
OzarkHillbilly
Speaking of history:
“… it’s still August, and with this contest turned over to the subs from the outset, this was a battle for roster spots for a couple of dozen Rams.
The headliner on that front obviously was Sam vs. Westbrooks — one last time. Sam was very active in the first half, and according to unofficial press box stats led the Rams with six tackles by game’s end. But Westbrooks wasn’t far behind with four tackles. One of those tackles came on his second sack of the preseason, and he added two quarterback hits.
“I’m gonna have to look at the tape, but Ethan was making a lot of plays every time I looked,” Fisher said.
As for Sam?
“I really didn’t see anything good or bad out of Mike … but he played hard,” Fisher said.
Fisher did say that Sam has shown enough in training camp and the preseason to show he belongs.
“I think he can play in this league — yes,” Fisher said. “As can some other guys on this team that had good preseasons.”
Schlemizel
I read a lot of history, I am familiar with a lot of what has gone on before and feel I understand our position in the universe of time.
So it is not ‘presentisim’ when I say we are well and truly fucked. The unprecedented visibility and control over our lives has never existed before so taking power back from the oligarchs, if it ever happens, will be orders of magnitude bloodier and more painful than the US labor movement of the 20th Century or even the French Revolution. But worse still is what we are doing to the environment, and there are historical examples for what comes next. The Anazai of the American Southwest, the Aztec and many others flourished until the environment changed then they died back. We are about to enjoy that experience on a global scale. There remnants moved on to merge with surrounding cultures this time there will be no place to hide.
SO I am my usual upbeat self.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I know, I really need to stop dropping acid in the morning. Obviously, if Joe is making sense, I’m hallucinating.
Mustang Bobby
Called my dad yesterday morning to wish him a happy 88th birthday and he regaled me with tales of the garden that he and mom have going in their postage-stamp sized back yard at the “life enrichment community.” That was the best conversation I had all week.
Looking forward to three days off including a trip to the Keys to unwind a little at a secluded beach.
OzarkHillbilly
Oooooops link for above: STL Post Disgrace.
Also, Progress in Afghanistan?
raven
@Schlemizel: Oh quit.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: That’s great! The thing I probably miss most with my dad were our port-game phone calls. He hated long distance charges, depression kid you know, but we always had a quick talk after a big game. It took a couple of years for me to stop reaching for the phone.
Schlemizel
@raven:
can’t, even though I know the game is rigged its the only game in town
raven
@Schlemizel:
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Baud
@Schlemizel:
Reading history usually has the opposite effect on me — it makes me appreciate how much worse humans have overcome. I think the one exception is climate change, which is truly novel in its global reach.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Didn’t you just recently scan a bunch of photos and/or slides? What scanner did you use?
My mother showed me a couple of photo albums yesterday, and it dawned me on that since I’m out here in Las Vegas for two more weeks I could get a scanner and do all her photographs and slides. Thinking about it, anyway.
Any advice appreciated.
raven
@Baud: I’m reading this right now. Turns out that Sam was right next to my ancestor in the 11th Tennessee the entire war. If one thinks life sucks now. . .
raven
@Steeplejack: I have a canon scanner LiDE210 and it is works great. Do you want to run it from a laptop?
Mustang Bobby
@Steeplejack: I picked up an Epson color inkjet printer/copier/scanner at Office Max for like $80. Great scanning quality and very user-friendly. If you can get the photos out of the albums without damage and place them on the glass it will be very easy. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
Steeplejack
I’m still a little unsettled on West Coast time, even though I’ve been out here (Las Vegas) since last Saturday. Circadian rhythms shot. I was exhausted last night and went to bed at 10:30—very early for me—and then popped wide awake about 1:30. Read in bed for a while and eventually got up. The dogs tried to claim a union-mandated breakfast, but I gave them each a bacon treat and told them to step off. They’ve gone back to sleep.
Thank Ceiling Cat for the Internet and cable TV.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel: You’re right, you know, the game is rigged. What else can one say when it always ends with Death.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Speak for yourself.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Yeah, I brought my laptop with me, so I presume I’m looking for a USB interface. I’ll check out the Canon model.
raven
@Baud: Everybody knows. . .
raven
@Steeplejack: I put as many photo’s on the scanner as will fit and then crop each one, open a new image file and paste them in one-at-a-time. Saves a little time.
raven
Awright, took the day off because I get my stitches out this morning.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: For 35mm negatives and slides I’m using this:
Pacific Image PrimeFilm XE
Unfortunately, I’m missing negatives for some picture(more than I thought) and have some that are different formats, so I’m using this:
Epson Perfection V550
I even managed to scan disc film with the Epson.
Steeplejack
@Mustang Bobby:
The pictures aren’t pasted down, they’re inserted in plastic (acetate?) sleeves.
My mother (age 84) apparently has been going through stuff and putting photos in albums, and I did a spit-take when I saw picture after picture that I had never seen before. And a lot of others that brought back memories.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Company Aytch is a great book, I’ve read it 3 or 4 times. Hard to believe all the battles he went through with barely a scratch. You’re gonna love it, if you don’t already.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Hope you get a dashing scar. Mine don’t show up except in certain lighting, but they didn’t require stitches.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Cool, will check ’em out. Don’t think there are any negatives to be done, but who knows what I’ll find.
Schlemizel
@Steeplejack:
Used to travel out to CA for business & always found myself awake in the hotel about 3:30-4. The only good part of the whole thing was one night I discovered that the old CHeech & Chong bit “Zey are killing ze girl, old man” was taken word for word from an old WWII era movie. I expected people to call the cops as I was laughing hysterically to know someone seriously wrote that scene.
someofparts
If you appreciate history, you might like the Archdruid website if you don’t already follow it. The guy who runs it seems to have actually read Toynbee’s multivolume comparative history of world civilizations.
For instance, did you know that multiple civilizations have had a phase where a new science or technology emerges? Well, they have. The tech phase of a civilization is then followed by a phase where the power of the new technology is overextended to problems it can’t solve. After which comes a phase when the society downshifts on over-application of their shiny new technology and rediscovers the value of older non-tech forms of understanding that solve problems technology can’t.
Learning that, I can look around now and see contemporary us over-applying our science. Mood-elevating drugs are prescribed to almost everyone these days, beginning with children. How many people would need those drugs if we ate real food instead of junk loaded with toxins, or lived in communities like John does where people walk each others’ dogs?
Science and tech are still so esteemed in our world that they have credibility even when they are obviously making things worse instead of fixing anything. Economics as currently malpracticed is the biggest example of that mistake that comes to mind. Meanwhile, established, valuable things like acupuncture get marginalized because we can’t validate them in a lab.
My only concern is that so far, our default position when we begin losing faith in the magic of technology seems to be fundamentalism. Guess that means it’s time to start imagining forms of low-tech community that aren’t authoritarian.
raven
@Steeplejack: I’m hopin!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: The Epson is really good quality and the software will autocrop photos/negatives/slides. From what I could see from the Cannon manual, it doesn’t seem to do negatives/slides.
Baud
I want pictures from the BJ meetup last night.
Phylllis
@raven: Available at Project Gutenburg–just downloaded it to my Kindle.
someofparts
Looking at the thread, I see that my style of thinking is out of place. I’ll go back to silent lurking now.
Betty Cracker
So I told y’all we’ve got my mom’s old Jeep Wrangler for my daughter to drive. Had it tuned up, and we’re scraping off all the crud that accumulated when it sat under a pole barn for six months.
The kid is still driving my car while these renovations are taking place. We took it around the local beach roads yesterday so she can re-learn that particular stick shift (she’s been driving my automatic for a few months but learned on a stick).
So anyway, a lady down the road feeds feral cats (to the disapproval of everyone in town), and one of the little bastards climbed up into the Jeep and sprayed it. Damn! How on earth do you get that wretched stink out of a vehicle?
Luckily it’s the type of car you can just hose out, but now I’m thinking every stupid male cat in this ZIP code will want to spray it since one put his stink on it. Any tricks to removing the heinous smell?
Betty Cracker
@someofparts: I think it’s an interesting take. Chime in more often, if you feel like it!
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: We had that happen to our porch furniture. My mom called up the interior decorator for his help, and he said “Charcoal lighter fluid.”
“Really?” Mom replied.
He said, “Yes, then apply a match. Nothing gets out the stink of cats’ pee.”
Try skunk-spray removal remedies.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My ancestor was in the 11th Tennessee so it’s particularly interesting for me.
Anne Laurie
@Betty Cracker: I’ve had good urine-neutralizer results with Odormute. Haven’t (praise goddess) had to deal with tomcat-stench, but it works on the stains from canine anal glands, and friends with field-trialing dogs swear by it for deskunking. Kind of a bear to mix up & needs to be handled as an industrial chemical, not a spray’n’wipe household cleanser.
Since the CrackerDaughter is working at an animal shelter, she may be able to pick up some (or an equivalent) from her internship?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Nose plugs? Channel #5? A flamethrower? And yes, every tom in Florida is coming to pee on your car.
Betty Cracker
@Anne Laurie: That’s a good idea, thanks. If the Jeep had regular upholstery, I think I’d go with the lighter fluid and match approach, but with this vehicle, you can dump a bucket of chemical cleaners in it and scrub it out, so hopefully we’ll be able to knock out the stench eventually. However, I’m tempted to apply the lighter fluid and match method to the idiot neighbor who attracts feral cats (and doesn’t fix them).
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: When I lived in Coral Gables (the poorer section) we had a neighbor who fed feral cats. With the cats came fleas, and I had to fumigate every three months plus apply calamine lotion for the bites. Another neighbor called Animal Control and had them cited for creating a public nuisance. But she still kept at it until one day we noticed that the cats had mysteriously disappeared. I moved out shortly thereafter, but I never found out what had happened. (No, I had nothing to do with it.)
Schlemizel
@someofparts:
Thanks for stopping by to tell us you don’t want to talk to us – feel free to stop by anytime you want to mention that you don’t want to talk to us, always a pleasure not hearing from you.
Tommy
Lighter fluid. Match. The only thing that will work IMHO. I took in two feral cats as kittens (long, long story). I kept them in one room, behind a closed door, cause they were very young and had already been abused. Took them a long time to get used to me. They pissed everywhere. I bought everything I could find to try and clean up. NOTHING worked.
Now they are fixed. Eight years old. No more of that “pissing everywhere.” The joys of my life.I couldn’t imagine a household without them around. But still pissed they ruined both a great rug and a wonderful leather love seat that I paid a small fortune for.
Iowa Old Lady
I read a short story at a local art center’s open mic night last night. The place was full of college students whose creative writing teacher gave them credit for coming. My god they were young. And I have no idea what they made of my fantasy story narrated by a kid. The guy who read before me was all unexpected images, no plot, and a girl cutting herself. But I had a good time.
bemused
A relative told me about a piece about almost every Founding Father quote by a likely future congress critter is fake which doesn’t surprise me one bit. Rightwingers are wired to rewrite history past and present to fit their belief in how the world really is. Come to think of it, they do that with future projections too.
Botsplainer
My local courthouse now has a bedbug infestation in a carpeted upholstered courtroom which is destined to spread. As somebody who is a little OCD about such things, this makes me very anxious.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Worth a try.
For car carpeting, recall once hearing someone swearing by liberally applying a mixture of half water and half old-fashioned Listerine (not the newer flavored varieties), blotting that up and then letting the car sit outdoors in the sun for a few days to allow the Listerine odor to disperse.
Barbara
@someofparts: I think your comment is spot on. Particularly agree with your take on mood-stabilizers. Almost everyone I know who is on one, probably wouldn’t be on one if their circumstances were different. They are all under horrible stresses, mainly job-related and lack-of-enough money and support-related. We live in a very competitive, mean-spirited society.
Here is one small example: the elementary school my now-teenaged son with autism went to was wonderfully inclusive back during his years there. Classes were made up of kids with wide-ranging academic abilities, which to my mind was a demonstration of the belief in the value of “all kinds of minds.” And there is research showing it is beneficial for young kids to be in mixed groupings.
No more. Now classes are being arranged by how well the kids are doing on their standardized tests. I know why the school is doing this, they are petrified of what will happen if their Race to the Top/NCLB scores aren’t high enough, and it is much easier to do the sort of test prep-directed curriculum with kids who are scoring in similar ranges.
It’s all completely arbitrary. We have those tests and rankings because of a combination of technology (which makes number-crunching so easy) and run-away crony capitalism (which makes it very profitable for the cronies who make the tests and test-prep materials). Plus there is a big streak in the spirit of our time that if you aren’t doing well, then you deserve all the misery that befalls you.
What’s the result? Stressed-out kids, teachers and staff, and by extension, the parents’ and families’ stress levels rise too.
As I said, just one small example that I think supports your theory. Anyway, don’t be discouraged if people don’t answer comments made at 6:59 in the morning — most of us are hustling to get the day started, not yet ready to check in on our favorite blogs.
Tommy
You folks here rock. A few months ago I mentioned in an open thread I was thinking of getting a new mountain bike, or just a new bike. Willing to pay upwards of $2,000. A few people here, one that owns a bike shop and another that works on bikes for a living started to give me suggestions. After a few of them I posted a pic of my bike and noted it was a Cannondale I got in 1992. Paid $990 for it.
They were like dude, why didn’t you mention that earlier. You’d be crazy to get another bike. You have a world class one already. Just take it in and have some work done. Don’t buy a new one.
So I did and just got it back. Had the thing detailed from top to bottom. New break cables. New chain. New tires more suited for tooling around town on asphalt. New grips for the handlebars. And a new seat.
It was $549 and not $2,000. It is like I have a new bike.
I forgot the screen names of those that suggested this, but I bet you know who you are. Saved me a ton of money and I couldn’t be happier, cause honestly my bike is worth more to me then a new $2,000 one. I hope it is ready to last another 20 + years.
debbie
My reading of history has shown me only that we never learn.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Sounds like a success. Life is to be enjoyed, anything else is a failure.
Tommy
@Barbara: I want to be careful here because some children might need drugs to help with this or that. In the 70s my parents thought I was “off.” Flew me to see experts. I guess I scored off the charts on IQ tests and stuff, but I wasn’t focused. Got terrible grades. Caused a lot of problems for teachers and students alike.
I am not sure it was called ADD at the time, but that was what I guess I had. They suggested all these “new” drugs.
My grandfather who was a small town doctor, but who read all the medical journals was like there is NO way I will let you do that to Tommy. Put him on those drugs. Not a chance in hell.
What I am about to say sounds made up. It is not.
He had my parents make me drink a few cups of coffee in the early AM before I went to school. I hated it. But as an adult now I know that caffeine was similar to the “high” you get from the drugs the doctors would have given me. And it seemed to work. Worked well in fact.
I get some children need drugs. I am just the dude that thinks we give them out to too many children (and adults). This, drinking some coffee, worked.
Betty Cracker
@Mustang Bobby: This incident may finally prompt me to call Animal Control on her ass. The feral cat feeding has been an annoyance for months, but I know the woman means well, so I’ve been reluctant to rat her out. But now it’s crossed the line from annoyance to property damage, so I’m all out of patience. I know some of the more assertive neighbors have complained about it to her, and she basically told them to go pound sand.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: IMHO you need to call Animal Control. In my small rural town, literally across the street from City Hall there is an old grain silo. Not functional for years. There must be at least two dozen feral cats that live there. This lady feeds them. Brings blankets. You name it. I get her heart is in the right place. But not IMHO the way to go about things. This was ongoing for years. The number of the cats kept growing. A few months ago the city shut her down. Boarded up any opening the cats could get into. Took away the blankets and little “dog style” structures she brought for them. Took all they could catch to the local Humane Society. Look I am a cat guy. I love cats. But you can’t do shit like this.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
rikyrah
Buffett heir buys Rosa Parks archive
7 hr ago | By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER of Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Hundreds of items that belonged to civil rights icon Rosa Parks and have been sitting unseen for years in a New York warehouse were sold to a foundation run by the son of billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, the younger Buffett said Thursday.
Howard G. Buffett told The Associated Press that his foundation plans to give the items, which include Parks’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, to an institute or museum he hasn’t yet selected. Buffett said the items belong to the American people.
“I’m only trying to do one thing: preserve what’s there for the public’s benefit,” he said. “I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them.”
A yearslong legal fight between Parks’ heirs and her friends led to the memorabilia being removed from her Detroit home and offered up to the highest bidder.
Parks, who died in 2005 at age 92, was one of the most beloved women in U.S. history. She became an enduring symbol of the civil rights movement when she refused to cede her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. That triggered a yearlong bus boycott that helped to dismantle officially sanctioned segregation and helped lift the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.
Because of the fight over Parks’ will, historians, students of the movement and the general public have had no access to items such as her photographs with presidents, her Congressional Gold Medal, a pillbox hat that she may have worn on the Montgomery bus, a signed postcard from King, decades of documents from civil rights meetings and her ruminations about life in the South as a black woman.
The impetus for the sale came earlier this year when Buffett saw a televised news report about how Guernsey’s Auctioneers has kept Parks’ valuables in a New York warehouse since 2006.
“I could not imagine having her artifacts sitting in a box in a warehouse somewhere,” Buffett said. “It’s just not right.”
So he directed the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to make an offer, which was accepted. A purchase agreement was signed over the summer, and the transaction was officially closed last week.
http://news.msn.com/us/apnewsbreak-buffett-heir-buys-rosa-parks-archive
metricpenny
Thanks Annie Laurie for that visual this morning.
That headline warms my heart so soon after the coverage we’ve seen of Ferguson.
There were 200,000 that day and not one tank or machine gun in sight.
That JFK was such a punk.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: One of my road bikes is 40 years old.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: Wow. Those people here made me understand my frame was rock solid. Keep it. Glad I did.
raven
@Tommy: It’s not a disorder or a deficit. We’re hunters in a farmers world.
ThresherK
@Tommy: So much “this”.
I’m old enough to remember when feeding a stray was done. But it’s different now: Feeding strays result in too many kittens. I don’t know when opinion (and therefore much of the policy )it changed, but it has been so for awhile.
PS On the same wavelength, before I head off to the landfill to pour my used motor oil into that big recycling tank, I will ask my octogenarian Dad what they did with old oil back in the ’50s.
Gin & Tonic
@ThresherK: They did the same thing they do with used oil in 80% of the world today.
Bystander
GMA featured a tweet from some nobody that showed a photoshopped PBO in the tan suit from yesterday’s press conference juxtaposed on a pic of a used car lot. The ostensible comment was on the sheer outrageousness of the POTUS wearing a tan suit. Of course, the real comment says so much more about ABC “News” than about Obama that I really want to tell them how offensive I find their veiled b/s. Wish I knew an effective way to contact GS.
Yesterday, I had the urge to contact Thomas Roberts after his discussion with JoeScar on Moanin’ Joe, tangential to the Gilibrand comments on the Senate gym. JoeScar was lamenting his one and only trip to the Congressional steamroom when he was a studly young gun in the House. Joe expressed his complete dismay that when he went in, there was nothing but old naked men. Roberts used a lot of discretion in not chiming in on the disappointment of taking your buff self down to the steamroom hoping for Aaron Schrock and Paul Ryan and finding old trolls like Newt Gingrich and Lindsay Graham. Wanted to congratulate him on the restraint.
Mustang Bobby
@Tommy: When I lived in that house, I used to shop at a grocery store in the middle of the city. The parking lot always had lots of birds — pigeons, mourning doves, starlings, grackles — hanging around to the point that I thought perhaps Tippi Hedron lived nearby. Then one Saturday I came out with my groceries and saw a little old lady loading up her trunk with her shopping bags. Then she pulled out a bag of birdseed that she’d just bought, opened it, and started scattering it all over the lot. Of course the birds descended, and then when a car drove by, they took off. Well, when birds take off, they off-load excess weight, as in poop, and it landed on all the cars nearby, including mine. I yelled at her, she cussed me out in Spanish, and I went to get the store manager. He came out, told her to take off, and a couple of days later they had signs up in English and Spanish “DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS!” But the old lady was back the next week.
El Caganer
@someofparts: If you don’t mind being verbally disemboweled from time to time, you’re pretty much free to write whatever you want here.
Tommy
@Mustang Bobby: Kill them all. I have a five foot by six window in my home office. My cat is all over wanting to kill birds. Don’t let her out to do that. I like birds. Big fan.
chopper
@someofparts:
boo fucking hoo, people aren’t immediately appreciating your utter brilliance.
BubbaDave
@Betty Cracker: Is there an organization in your town that does catch/spay-or-neuter/release? I’m a crazy cat lady in training myself– have my mu-mu already picked out for when I retire– but the goal is to have fewer ferals to feed in a generation or so.
schrodinger's cat
@someofparts:
Economics is not a physical science, like say physics or chemistry is. The way it is practiced now, it is equal parts an exercise in mathematical logic and dogma.
Just One More Canuck
@someofparts: what style of thinking would that be? Troll? Asshole?
Mnemosyne
@someofparts:
Dude, half of us are on the West Coast. I’m not getting up at 4:00 a.m. just to check comments on Balloon Juice.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: Slacker.
BubbaDave
@Mnemosyne: Lazy bastard, aren’t you?
Cervantes
@someofparts:
If established and valuable, why not yet scientifically validated? What’s the hold-up?
Cervantes
@someofparts: Toynbee is voluminous. Some of his work was abridged, by Somervell, for example.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
@BubbaDave:
I know, I know, I should be awake and monitoring B-J at all times.
In my defense, Bill lives about 3 miles from me and seems to have been awake at 3:00 am, so I’m now deciding that he was in charge of monitoring the thread for the West Coast. You fell down on the job, Bill. ;-)
El Caganer
@Cervantes: Indeed.
PJ
The Gopnik piece is ok in that he advocates that the main lesson one should take from reading history is not certitude about the rightness and appropriateness of one’s actions, but rather humility (and, I would add, open-mindedness) because, even with the best intentions and best information available, things often work out far different than we planned (of course, every adult should know this from their own lives.)
Unfortunately, he then goes on to ignore his own advice and argue that Britain should not have gotten involved in WWI in 1914 because this would have avoided million of casualties for the British. Unfortunately, there is no way for him to know this, at all. One could argue that, faced with a Europe controlled by a Germany (with a collective navy and industrial base larger than Britain’s) intent on dominating the globe, it is pretty likely that Britain and Germany would have come into conflict sooner or later, and the end result would probably have been far worse for Britain, if independence still mattered for them. Gopnik’s post-factual advice to the British ironically proves his own point, that to assume you know how things are going to end, even in a counterfactual situation, is a gross error.
History does, on the other hand, help one recognize situations and behaviors when they occur, and provide more insight into how things might play out (emphasis on “might”) than one could derive from one’s own experience, if one has good judgment. The problem is that, as one can see from Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pereman, et al., that often the worst people, with the worst judgment, who can only see their own brilliance, are making the decisions.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Sister gave me a photo album for Xmas one yr. Called, wait for it……
The Dysfunctional Family Album. Pictures of life and times of a young Ruckus. Good stuff.
Best gift I’ve ever received, OK with the exception of a large deposit on a motorcycle I owned for 27 yrs.
CaseyL
@someofparts: No, it’s not – it’s just sometimes hard to get peoples’ attention here, with four or five conversations going on at once.
I love history more than is seemly, so I’ll check out Archdruid.
About your contention regarding new tech: let me think on that one a bit. I get what you’re saying, but I can’t think of instances where a society turned its back on new tech for very long. In fact, the Meiji Restoration is the only large-scale instance I can think of.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Commercial plug.
Clorox Bathroom cleaner w/bleach.
Once bought an old trunk that I think had been used as a fish delivery truck. Didn’t stink when I bought it but about 2 months later the stink re-emerged. Actually more like took over. Had to clean it twice, wiping down every surface but it no longer smelled/smells like 50 thousand tons of decaying fish.
Ruckus
@Tommy:
Bill is in the mail. Wait breathlessly by your mailbox. BTW the bill is $1501.
Cervantes
@PJ: I’m not his biggest fan but I think there may be less of a contradiction there than you’re seeing.
He’s lamenting the abuse of history by war-mongers. If we set aside his particular woulds and shoulds for a moment, what he’s getting at is that in 1914 the powers-that-be were feeding themselves the wrong sort of history, filled with self-aggrandizement, bombast, and cant. He’s saying there’s another way to use history; and that a more humble approach — recognizing more uncertainty and embodied in his imaginary advice to Lord Grey — would have been equally “historical” and might have worked better.
I agree with you that the particular humble advice Gopnik offers may not have worked out any better — but it’s also too easy to dismiss his general point and end up concluding that the Great War was simply inevitable; or that everything that happens is.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Time for one of my recurring plugs for Neustadt and May’s Thinking in Time.
Bob In Portland
Looks like the coup government in Ukraine is collapsing. Eastern Ukraine will become Novorussia. It’s too late for Poroshenko to kiss and make up. The area to the south along the coast is still in play. The question is how the general public reacts to the fascists in power. Will they remain intimidated or will they rise up, or will another government of the same people shuffled up take over. It won’t help when the truth about MH17 comes out. Will the rump state be given NATO membership?
There is heavy damage to the industries in the east, they will have to turn to Russia for aid but at least they will have supplies of natural gas. How the rump state is dealt with by Europe remains open, but I presume the EU is not happy about Ukraine blocking Russian gas from them.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: The people are, indeed, rising up, and are hard at work in Mariupol building defenses against the advancing Russian invasion.
NotMax
@Bob In Portland
Hodorski!
PJ
@Cervantes: I don’t disagree. From the standpoint of a human in time with limited knowledge, things do not appear inevitable, and we have to make our decisions based on principles and probabilities. I just wish Gopnik were not so certain about the rightness of his own judgments.
Just One More Canuck
@Bob In Portland: just for you
http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/08/russianotrussia.jpg?w=300
Bob In Portland
@Just One More Canuck: I saw that. Did you know that Canadians under the NATO guise delivered weapons to the Ukrainian army this week? The rebels says thank you.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: It’s interesting that the rebels initially bypassed Mariupol. Perhaps they’re willing to wait out the Ukrainian army and militias there and just continue along the Black Sea coast. I thought that Odessa would be awhile, but it could fall in weeks.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: For one who professes to be opposed to military actions, I find your obvious delight at the invasion of one sovereign country by another, um, … odd.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Gin & Tonic: The glee expressed is rather off putting, isn’t it?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: I am opposed to American military actions. The demise of Ukraine is a direct result of American insinuation into Ukrainian politics. It was predictable. In fact, it was predicted.
Fascism works on several levels. It is a system that maintains an extreme maldistribution of wealth for the richest while blaming the inherent problems in the system on the have-nots or other identifiable “others”. While the Svoboda Party gave lip service to the evil of Moscow Jews, in reality there isn’t enough of a Jewish community left in Ukraine to lay the blame for past and future economic failures on them. Thus, the push east against ethnic Russians. The civil war only worsened the fracture lines in Ukrainian ethnic divisions. Anti-draft demonstrations are going on in ethnic regions in the west.
While the long-term national interests of the US have again been delayed (control of the world’s energy through controlling the sources in Central Asia), there may have been a shorter-term goal involving US politics. I have long suspected that the Kagan-Nuland wing of the permanent government may have been making mischief in order to weaken Obama and Dems in the midterms. Syria certainly didn’t work out as Obama had planned. It wouldn’t be the first time that our foreign policy has been sabotaged to score points against a sitting President.
In any case, the parade in Kviv for Bandera will have fewer participants this winter.
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Glee?
For the destruction of eastern Ukraine’s industries by military shelling? The death of thousands of civilians? I am not disappointed that some of the fascist militias organized to bring terror to the east are being decimated, but they shouldn’t have been created in the first place.
Actually, my feelings are more along this line:
Until BJers finally understand and come to grips with US national interests they will be little more than confused complainers in a game, the rules of which have been kept secret from them.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: I am opposed to American military actions.
But not to Russian ones. Noted.
Bob In Portland
You might find this interesting.
Considering that the plug will eventually have to be pulled on the MH17 coverup, I suspect any will in the West to buck up the rump state of Ukraine will be considerably diminished.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Which military actions are you opposed to?
If you actively root for fascists, Gin, and now you’ve found out that the nationalist myths of Ukraine were just another means to manipulate you, you must be terribly disappointed now.
Perhaps instead of striking out at the world as reality settles in around you, you should do some self-examination regarding how you were manipulated.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
But Russian military actions are A-OK. Gotcha.
I mean, really, I understand — you think that Russia should be allowed to dominate their region, by whatever means Russia thinks are necessary, and the other countries in that region don’t get to have a vote. Funny how that almost exactly mirrors your opinion of what the US is up to, except that Russian Dominance = Good and US Dominance = Bad.
Congratulations: you have now reached the level of a Soviet official in 1956. Hey, if those Hungarians didn’t want to be crushed by the military might of the Soviets, they shouldn’t have tried to resist.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: What is America’s national interest in Ukraine? I have asked BJers over and over, and it’s as if you are forbidden to think about the subject. The closest you get is “Russia is evil.”
It’s not as if the Ukrainian government in Kiev haven’t been getting military aid from NATO, i.e., the US. There are reports of a Polish contingent fighting with the militias that apparently got swallowed up in one of the many cauldrons forming in the east.
And what has all of the US’s interventions and invasions done for the Mideast besides taking energy sources offline? Which American intervention has been the one you like the best? Iraq? Vietnam? Iran? Guatemala? How about the aid with gave during Suharto’s takeover? I bet you rubbed you hands in glee when Kissinger oversaw the overthrow of Allende, right?
If you are honest with yourself, you probably haven’t been a fan of American interventions, but you don’t know how to express it during a Democratic administration. But that’s because you don’t understand that American foreign policy continues no matter who is in the White House. It’s been this way since 1963. And if you actually entertain the idea that the agency that has spent its existence interfering with and overthrowing governments around the world for the benefit of our corporations might have gone after the biggest prize of all, you would be deemed a conspiracy theorist, and you’re no conspiracy theorist. Our elections are fixed long before the votes are counted.
I’ll ask you again, Mnem. Why has America stayed in Afghanistan for almost fifteen years now? Because Osama bin Laden once lived in a cave in Tora Bora? Because the Taliban are religious bigots?
You don’t understand our country, you don’t understand what our foreign policy is, and you are angry with me when I tell you that the western news media have been giving you a series of lies and now it’s all coming due. That fellow Gordon who cowrote with Judith Miller back in the old WMD/yellowcake days. He’s writing news articles about Ukraine, still for the NY Times. Has he served you well?
You have been uninformed about the nature of what’s been happening in Ukraine. You have been told that there are no fascists in the government so you don’t understand why ethnic Russians might be upset about the coup (if you even believe there was a coup) and fight back.
Okay, so be it. That’s your choice.
Bob In Portland
P.S.: The US has military contingents in something between 130 and 150 countries around the world. And you’re worried that Russia is dominating the world?
Bob In Portland
This might help some here.
Barbara
@Tommy: Yes, ’cause coffee is a stimulant, as are “attention” medications. They don’t make you high, they help the metaphorical traffic cop in your brain direct things a little faster and more smoothly, which actually slows some things down — the difference between keystone kops running in circles and battalions marching in formation, to stretch that metaphor a bit. Had your school situation been a better fit for you, you might have been able to do just as well without it.
In general though, I agree with Raven: ADD is a neurological difference that can be quite useful. It is good for a society to have different kinds of minds working in their own best ways. If only we would let that happen…
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
America — and the European Union — would like Ukraine to be allied with the EU and NATO. I have said this to you over and over and over again and you have ignored it every single time because it doesn’t conform with your pre-programmed beliefs. They want Ukraine to be allied with the EU for the same reason Russia wants Ukraine to be allied with Russia. This is not some great, unfathomable mystery.
The western media has been saying for months that Russia has been interfering in Ukraine. You now freely admit that Russia has not only been interfering in Ukraine for months, but has now actively invaded them. Tell me, how exactly did the western media mislead me since you and the western media are telling me the same thing? The only difference is that you think Russia’s actions are Right and Good, while the western media disapproves of them. But you and the western media are telling me the exact same thing about Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The “ethnic Russians” who are “fighting back” are Russian citizens. Not Ukrainian citizens of Russian descent, but Russian citizens. Even the sources you quote admit this. And yet you keep repeating this mindless trope about “fascists” and “ethnic Russians” even when your own sources contradict you.
Again, if you would at least be honest and admit that you want Russia to re-absorb Ukraine into its borders because it will be a thumb in the eye to the EU and NATO, you would probably get a little more respect. But you weave these fantasies about ethnic Russian rebels standing against evil Ukrainian fascists and you end up looking like a fucking moron every. single. time.
Just say it out loud, Bob: you want Ukraine to be re-absorbed into Russia. That’s what Putin has been heading towards for months, it’s what you’ve been cheerleading for, so just say it out loud and stop inventing imaginary enemies in your head.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: Golf clap. (other things to do this evening and next couple of days.)
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Me, personally? The one I disliked the least in the last, say, twenty years, was restoring Aristides to power in Haiti.
And you?