Category Archives: culture

It’s Broader than That

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Dominic Green, in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal‘s Free Expression, wrote of the German government’s attempt to censor—to bar from public viewing—a movie that was, by most accounts, badly done schlock (Green’s term). The rationale was that the movie depicted unrepentant and graphic violence by German vigilantes against Germany’s “immigrants,” the illegal aliens present in that nation.

German regulators’ problem with Citizen Vigilante wasn’t its depiction of unspeakable acts, but their unmentionable perpetrators. For years, European governments did their best to deny that mass immigration, notably from majority-Muslim societies, correlated to documented rises in the number of sexual crimes, especially gang rape.

Green closed his piece with this:

We like to think of the arts as our conscience, pushing social problems to our attention. If Europeans must rely on cinéastes of Mr Boll’s caliber to depict Europe’s current problems, it’s because no one else wants to admit their nature and extent.
Mr Boll has illuminated the crisis of political legitimacy and social order that is rapidly unraveling Europe’s peace. His film was censored to keep the peace. That shows the severity of the continent’s crisis, and the fragility of Europe’s peace.

It’s broader in scope than that, though. Government censorship, of nearly anything in any milieu, is a clear and dispositive sign of the intellectual bankruptcy, arrogance of Knowing Better, of cowardice of the politicians and bureaucrats who inflict it. Even the (legitimate) censor of slander is after the fact, not preemptive.

If the citizenry cannot speak freely, they cannot be free. It’s on those citizens in their aggregate—We the People as we put it in the opening phrase of our Constitution—not just individual makers of bad movies or one-off rich idealists, to change out those politicians who would limit our speech.

A Truism, and a Solution

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A letter-writer in Monday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wrote this while commenting on Alexis de Tocqueville’s praise for our nation’s then-penchant for solving problems locally rather than crying to Mama Government:

A statute can’t manufacture civic energy or entrepreneurial zeal. That has to come from citizens who are politically engaged or not hindered in their efforts to continue the American dream.

That is plainly true. And, pedantically, it echoes Aristotle’s and Plato’s remarks about politics and citizens’ role in it.

The solution is just as plain, and it’s made so by the failing, and increasing depth of the failure, of our public school systems to properly educate our children. We need the competition of school choice, the freely done setup of voucher and charter schools and of homeschooling, whether individually or parents setting up homeschool pods. That competition even improves the performance of local examples of public schools.

That last, though, requires the reduction, if not elimination, of teachers unions, organizations whose management teams care not a farthing about our children, nor even of their teacher members, but only about their own political power.

Guests and Wedding Expenses

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A letter-writer to Market Watch had this, even as she offered some money-saving tips that he thinks he’s found:

I found I may be in danger of spending close to $7,000 as a wedding guest this year—and that’s while I’m also trying to save up for my own wedding.

That’s just…foolish. Even for the several weddings aggregated that he plans to attend.

As long as enablers like these…guests…keep supporting deliberately ostentatious ego-trip weddings, those costs are only going to rise.

Revolution vs Evolution

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The opening two paragraphs lay out the question regarding the nature of warfare:

The way wars are fought is changing fast, as new technologies upend military doctrines on everything from procurement to executing operations.
But just how radical will this transformation be in years to come? And are the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested by the US, its allies and rivals in new tanks, planes and warships going to become the equivalent of buying horses and arrows on the eve of machine guns and howitzers?

Germany’s Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, General Carsten Breuer, added to the question:

The character of warfare is changing fundamentally. Armed forces must be able to adapt faster, integrate new technologies, and learn at speed. If we fail to adapt, we will not be able to prevail.

And Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington:

Revolutions in warfare are often declared but rarely arrive. Most military developments, like the current trends in the use of drones and precision strikes, are evolutionary. Nobody doubts the impact of gunpowder, but it was on the battlefield for hundreds of years, alongside knights and pikemen.

And this:

Military leaders, governments, and defense companies disagree on whether to call the current developments a revolution that warrants a complete overhaul of existing doctrines.

It’s a silly, time- and resource-wasting question. The situation neither demands nor holds unnecessary the idea of completely overhauling existing doctrines. It does, though, demonstrate—demand—the need to completely review, from the ground up de novo all existing doctrines and to do so periodically.

What matters, rather, is this constant: the need to manage and keep up with, even to drive, the pace of change, and that pace today is far faster than that prior rate of moving from pikes and trebuchets to rifles and cannons, far faster than the pace of weapons, logistics, tactics, and strategies during the world’s last major set-piece war, in the last century. The pace, rapidly accelerating, also is expanding into the constitution of warfare and the nature of war itself.

The question of whether we can make necessary changes across all dimensions of conflict, from political to information to economic to cyber to kinetic—and across the logistics and maintenance aspects of each of them—faster than our enemies can then becomes the Critical Item of national survival, as demonstrated from as far back as Alexander the Great and his weapons development and use and his tactics; the Roman way of war compared with that of the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians; and the tactics change demonstrated by the Spanish tercio.

Each of these areas of pacing also has a Do Loop that must be capable of moving apace, from recognition of a situation; through decision regarding how to respond, or better, preempt; to acting on that decision. Our Do Loops—all of them—need to be capable of operating inside of—faster than—our enemies’. If they evolve and adapt faster than we do, then we lose, and they win.

Revolution vs evolution is an irrelevancy.

Too Many Choices

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A letter-writer in the Sunday Wall Street Journal Letters section whined that his SUV has too many choices, too many buttons, switches, levers, and touch-screen options, and he’s too easily confused by them.

We’ve owned our SUV for more than a year and still don’t understand how to control many of the interior environment options.
I find myself not watching the road while I search for the correct button or icon to turn on the air conditioner or change entertainment. I put tape on some of the many buttons in order to locate them by touch. The digital display around the speedometer has a mind of its own, often spontaneously changing.

Has he considered reading his SUV’s operating manual? Those very clearly explain the purpose of all of those controls and how to employ them.

The digital display around my SUV’s speedometer occasionally changes, seemingly on its own. It doesn’t, though, change on its own; it’s always due to my bumping one or another button on my HOTAS—the two small collections of buttons and rockers on the left and right side of my steering wheel. The letter-writer should give some consideration to his handling of his own steering wheel.

It’s a baseless beef. My SUV, like any other modern car, has just the right number of buttons, switches, levers, and touch-screen options; neither more nor less. I could wish the touch screen options were replaced with buttons, switches, and/or levers, but that’s separate from the letter-writer’s plaint.

If this person is that easily confused or distracted behind the steering wheel, maybe he should consider hanging up his keys/fob.