Bill's Notes

It's 10:22 and I'm almost done with my issue. Heh. Outstanding deadline performance. As soon as I'm done procrastinating by filing this entry, I'll finish up. And then it's fishing.

At the risk of giving aid and comfort to our opponents on the left, I just want to say that ignoring inconvenient facts is not limited to the left. Sorry. It's true. Our side does it, too.

(What provoked this? This. From here.)

Yes, liberal writers haven't mentioned the WMD discovery. But that's because it's still just ONE shell. The uncomfortable fact remains that Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations to justify the war in Iraq contained inaccurate information, and that's pretty damned sloppy business. It makes those of us who supported the war look like idiots.

You don't go before the Security Council on international television and present to our allies (and our would-be allies and everyone else) screwed-up information. You just don't do it. every bit of info needed to be triple checked. The errors presented have hurt our credibility and have hurt Bush's credibility. Heads should roll because of it.

Now, to me, the War on Iraq is pretty much self-evidently justifiable, that is, the reasons were obvious even to the casual observer. The sanctions regime was killing Iraqis. It was inhuman. The options were give in and back-off, and reward Saddam Hussein's ruthlessness and obstinacy, or raise the stakes, and invade the country and replace him. The credibility of the U.N. and the U.S. was at stake. Our allies like France and others like Russia were irresponsible and immoral in merely seeking to exploit the situation. So the attack came, and it was long, long overdue. It should've happened in 1992. Bush I screwed up. So good, we've fixed the problem.

But that said, you don't go before the Security Council and especially corrupt allies like France and blow smoke.

I haven't seen enough on the right on just how badly Bush screwed this up.

And another one was three or four years or so back, National Review ran one article after another gleefully reporting how California's energy crisis (brownouts and such) was caused by tampering with market economics. There were complaints that the problem would take years to fix because California companies weren't building power plants.

Then, one day, the electricity-supply problem went away. One day and it was gone, and has not returned. What happened? You wouldn't know from reading National Review. They didn't say another word about it. A big omission, don't you think? (What happened is a law was changed and electricity started to flow back into the grid.)

There are fair-minded people, and there are not. And both kinds are in both parties.

No, I'm not giving up on this idea. Which idea, you ask?

To have MLB conduct the 1994 World Series. Officially.

The solution is simple: Just have the teams with the best record in their respective leagues play each other in a seven-game series. All the players have aged the same number of years, so there's no advantage or disadvantage to either team.

Here's the competitors. NL Champion v. AL Champion.

Who knows a sponsor?

Garry Kasparov in today's Opinion Journal:

The Bush administration has contributed to the confusion with its ambiguous "war on terror." You cannot fight a word. You need targets, you need to know what you are fighting for and against.

Bush's big strategic mistake. Getting the names wrong. The names were Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to Massachusetts' Goodridge decision, gender is no longer a component of marriage; indeed, to consider gender issues (i.e., one of each) in marriage is now discriminatory. I'm glad the Mass. Supreme Court straightened me out on this issue, because I was benighted and confused. In Goodridge, our enlightened superiors instructed us that setting aside a separate institution (e.g., civil unions) for same-gender relationships is inherently unequal, just like the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned in Brown v. Board of Education. Then it declared the right to start on the 50th anniversary of Brown, just to bring home the point.

It's this separate but equal as applied to gender that intrigues me. If this reasoning stands, it's just a matter of time before legally we go gender-free in society. Not just equal rights. No more distinguishing between men and women by gender.

No more men's and women's rooms. Isn't that a separate-but-equal for gender when it comes to facilities? No more exclusive sporting competitions divided into either men or women. That's not only separate, it's unequal, even under Title IX. Why should men play baseball, and women play softball? BS. Coed teams only, with only the best players making the team. We don't have a whites-only basketball, or blacks-only hockey. Why should we have separate men's and women's teams?

STAN:
I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG:
What?!
LORETTA:
It's my right as a man.
JUDITH:
Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA:
I want to have babies.
REG:
You want to have babies?!
LORETTA:
It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG:
But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA:
Don't you oppress me.
REG:
I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA:
[crying]
JUDITH:
Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS:
Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG:
What's the point?
FRANCIS:
What?
REG:
What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS:
It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG:
Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

Lileks gives a living legend a well-deserved crack on the knuckles. Good. The washed-up sot deserves a thorough ass-whupping.

Now, don't get me wrong. I used to be a big fan of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Back at my first job at the daily, I started reading the good doctor. Avidly. Enthusiastically. With relish.

Started with Hell's Angels. Then Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Then Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Then the Great Shark Hunt. Later, I learned some of the backstory.

All Hunter did was take the role of a sociopathic character from J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man named Sebastian Dangerfield, add some postmodern paranoia, and apply the idea to his life. The 1960s took care of the rest — Sandoz acid, the Fillmore, Nixon, Sonny Barger, Ken Kesey, it all just fell into place after that. What made Thompson work was he was funny. And he could write.

But after a few years he started getting cranky, yes, in the sense of a child that needs a nap cranky. By about 1970 he was starting to ossify. He was still great, and he had a good five years of great work ahead of him, but the worldview was getting rigid. On only his second book, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, he was convinced that America was all used up, the 60s were gone, and it was all DOOOOM DOOOOM and YOU MISSED IT KID and IT AIN'T EVER COMING BACK!!!!!! I mean, the world would never be so crazy that some stranger would just lick acid off your shirt in the Fillmore restroom, right?

So, 34 years later, what do we have from HST? No surprise. The same old schtick. Hell, Garry Trudeau does a better job with the same schtick through the character of Uncle Duke than Thompson has. Duke at least adjusts. Thompson is getting ... well, whiny. And gonzo whining just doesn't cut it.

Here's Thompson:

The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.

Beyond that, we have lost the respect of the world and lost two disastrous wars in three years. Afghanistan is lost, Iraq is a permanent war Zone, our national Economy is crashing all around us, the Pentagon's "war strategy" has failed miserably, nobody has any money to spend, and our once-mighty U.S. America is paralyzed by Mutinies in Iraq and even Fort Bragg.

Then comes the anti-doctor, James Lileks. He starts the above quote without attribution. I thought the quote was just some DemUnderground Dipshit bitching and moaning. Even as it continues:

The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

When I read "greed-crazed bastards" I thought I was reading someone who'd thrown in a Hunteresque line. The idea that this drivel was HST himself is sad. And pathetic. Like an echo of an echo of an echo of an echo ...

You know what's most ironic? The young HST, the one who made his name in the world, would've probably called the older writer on his pathetic inability to keep up.

Read what HST had to say about Hemingway's suicide in Ketchum, Idaho:

Ketchum was Hemingway's Big Two Hearted River, and he wrote his own epitaph in the story of the same name, just as Scott Fitzgerald had written his epitaph in a book called The Great Gatsby. Neither man understood the vibrations of a world that had shaken them off their thrones, but of the two, Fitzgerald showed more resilience. His half-finished Last Tycoon was a sincere effort to catch up and come to grips with reality, no matter how distasteful it might have seemed to him.

Hemingway never made such an effort. The strength of his youth became rigidity as he grew older, and his last book was about Paris in the Twenties.

Standing on a corner in the middle of Ketchum it is easy to see the connection Hemingway must have made between this place and those he had known in the good years....

Perhaps he found what he came here for, but the odds are huge that he didn't. He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him--not even when his friend came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So, finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.

Guy could write at one time, couldn't he?

But it's easy to judge the previous generation, just as it's easy to forgive the generation before that.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Today is a milestone in the United States. It is the day when our culture, long ago having switched from Christian to secular, has switched over from secular to pagan. Above is a relevant passage on what the switch means. When a culture is so confused that it allows two grooms or two brides to call themselves married and congratulates itself for this, that culture has been turned over.

Yet, the above passage, reinterpreted for sexual sin [not homosexual sin], convicts me just as much as anyone I might accuse with this passage. I am covetous. I am greedy. I have rebelled against God. I have enjoyed when others have sinned. I cannot sit here and say that I didn't contribute to, engage in and glory in the wickedness that offended God to the point where He has simply turned our people over to the depravity of our own minds. God be merciful to me a sinner, God be merciful to us sinners, because 2,000 years later, we don't know what we're doing.

This is a dark day for orthodox believers, faithful people and traditionalists of all kinds -- because we have just been told that our beliefs and traditions are benighted and unconstitutional. Or at least so in one state. Yet, rather than cry DOOM DOOM DOOM, let's remember the victory is Christ's.

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you....

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

I cannot speak for anyone else. But my sufferings have been nothing compared to those of the past, and particularly the first Christians, with the possible exception of temptation. But we can even be glad that our temptations are not those our children and grandchildren will face.

We are called to repentance, reconciliation, and then to rejoice in the Lord.

Pax Christi, everyone, during this Easter season.