h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mssrs. Bush and Rumsfeld don't get it, do they? No one else wants a war, no one else will support a war, and frankly, I want to see the raw numbers on Americans who support a war, because everyone I talk to thinks they're off their rockers.

Now, if someone could prove, say, that Hussein supplied the fake passports for the 9/11 hijackers, I'd say go get the mofo. Be that as it may, we have more cause to eradicate the Saudi royal family, since fully 3/4s of the hijackers were Saudis.

Rumsfeld won't die on the way to Baghdad. Some kid from Grand Forks, North Dakota, who joined the army to get a college education, will. How sad.

Yeah, Rumsfeld I find frightening...

I feel ambivalent about the Iraq thing in general. Most of my friends see it much the same way. Summarising :
- Saddam should be stopped. He represents a danger to us all. 9/11 upped the ante considerably, and if a way could be found to topple him, the world would be a better place for it. A secondary agenda of opening up access to Iraqi oil, leaving it managed by a friendly and stable Iraqi government, would be a good thing too. Saudi Arabia is a dangerous country, governed by some very unpleasant people, but its current economic position makes it pretty well untouchable.
- On the other hand, Bush and Co. are mounting a bad campaign at the wrong time. I don't think they appreciate how low their stock is outside the US. They seem to think there's a store of sympathy for them in Europe post-9/11. In reality, that sympathy is not for them, but for the American people. A clear distinction exists in European minds between the public in the US and the nation's political system + big business infrastructure. The failure to engage in South Africa is a massive minus for Bush - a refusal to acknowledge that American business is culpable in world crises (economic and environmental) is almost as bad in European eyes as is the state-sponsorship of terrorism. The support of Israel by the US is seen as arbitrary, and inflammatory. Bush himself will always be seen as an inadequate individual whose minders stole an election, so desecrating Western principles of democracy. Bush is not Churchill - the very comparison is odious.

There are very many Europeans (and British) who are dead against war with Iraq on the terms and with the timing now offered. There are significantly fewer who support it, and most of those do so reluctantly. Moreover, a common fear among supporters of the overthrow of Saddam (including exiled Iraqis) is that the US Administration wouldn't have the courage to see it through, and to suffer the loss of tens of thousands of American lives that it would surely cost to prosecute it.

P.

I think that perhaps Bush and Cheney want to see Hussein crushed once and for all. Cheney, in particular, was not happy with the former Bush's unwillingness to kill Saddam...

Part of the problem is, as you pointed out, American government's inability to take responsibility for its foreign policy, or lack thereof. The whole fiasco over Kyoto is a prime example. Everyone signed it, even countries that don't produce any greenhouse gasses, and the US gov has the audacity to say no? While relaxing pollution regulation? It boggles the mind.

My biggest problem with going to war with Iraq is an extension of something you said, about having a friendly stable government in power. Now, if nothing else, the history of the region AND American involvement in it should prove that toppling a dictator in no way assures anyone of a better replacement. The US created the Taliban, funded it, trained it, gave it weapons, to "save" Afghanistan from the evil communists. And look where that got us! Iraq, like Afghanistan, is a "created" country, in which there are several ethnic groups (the Kurds, etc) who will, if given the slightest opportunity, tear the country apart to gain power. While I think Saddam Hussein is a madman, he is at least a known quantity. The US has no guarantee that if Saddam goes, someone favorable to the US will come into power. In fact, it could be a whole lot worse, with Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni fundamentalists (although Sunnis tend to be less fanatical on the whole)....goodness, but a lot of the Middle East hates the US for what it's done in the region, starting with their support of Israel (but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax!)

Does Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? Probably. Will he use them? Not unless we attack him. It's sort of like the old Cold War MAD idea....we've got em, they've got em, and nobody's gonna use em --they just look threatening.

I say let him stay. Quietly support moderates in the country so that when he does die, as everyone does eventually, they will be in a position to take power.

But that's just my .02

I agree with pretty well all your points. Some of the same ideas, rearranged from a European standpoint, might interest you and give you something to think about.
The origins of the mess of modern day Afghanistan, South Asia in general, the Middle East etc have nothing much to do with America. They largely predate the existence of the US of A.
Britain and other European countries are far more culpable. The British stirred things up big time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Before that, mayhem was a West-European team-effort. Christianity was about as mature and fair-minded as modern-day Islam when it set out on the Crusades. Familiar echoes here, a millenium before our time, of a righteous war of vengeance against defiling infidels. Going back a bit further, Alexander the Great has a lot to answer for. In the end, it's pretty arbitrary where you put the blame, but it's certainly an exaggeration to suggest that modern-day America created the Taleban. They just armed a particular faction, out of expediency, at a particular time. Two decades later, it all looked like a terrible mistake - but isn't all this just the reality of being Top Nation?
D'ya know what you should REALLY be mad about, as an apparently liberal-minded and intelligent US citizen? I thinks it's this :
Back in the Eighteenth Century, a fledgling nation tried (and, for a while, succeeded) to rise above all this political expediency. It fought wars only when forced to defend itself, and it fought them on high moral ground. It denounced the tawdry politics of Europe and founded the first true democracy in the world. It embraced a constitution which stands today as one of the most principled declarations of philanthropy the World has ever known.
OK, so there were stains on the Flag from the outset. We started with Custer being a proto-Rumsfeld. And Black Americans might raise their eyebrows at the above paragraph at least as much as might Native Americans. But the central point is valid. For two hundred years, the US of A could claim to be a beacon of political idealism.
Not even Hiroshima, nor Vietnam, nor Watergate marked the prostitution of these ideals in the European mind. There was a gradual erosion, sure, but it's only the last few years that have really blown the dream away. The snub of Kyoto, Florida recounts, another inadequate President (this one without the affability and charm of his immediate predecessors); these are the things that have finally done it for many Europeans.
Here's the crunch. Europe ran the world for two millenia, with a succession of different countries bubbling to the top at different times. It was undemocratic and it was ruled by force, and it took great men to rule it. The US of A wanted no such tyrants, and aspired to replace them with a Democracy.
It was a great thing. But now the US has declined to the moral standards of the Old World, and now it has no Great Men to stand in Democracy's place.
God Bless America. Yours is a country for which I have deep affection and respect. You deserve better than the fools who lead you.
P.

Hi MR
Wo-ah!...that stuff above reads a bit intense in the cool light of day. I've lightened (and sobered) up now, sorry.
Guess what what it's meant to say (in a long-winded fashion) is that many European support the goal of toppling Saddam, but aren't so sure about the legitimacy of its advocates.
See you around
P.

Pinniped, dear, you have good points. Okay, the reason we are ruled by idiots is that most people in this country are optimistic....by that I mean that they desperately want to believe the "campaign promises" of the candidates. The problem with this is that time and time again, these promises turn out to be lies.

I also believe the erosion of American Democracy began much earlier than you state. I think it began in the 1950s with Joseph McCarthy. It was his witch hunt that allowed men like Johnson, Nixon and Reagan to become president. Jimmy Carter will someday be recognized as the genius he is (the peace accords between Egypt and Israel?! How impressive is that). The other night I heard someone say that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president the US ever had...I nearly choked on my dinner! It is almost exclusively the fault of Reagan that the economy is in the shambles it is, that our foreign policy is for the rubbish bin, and why most Americans my age will never receive Social Security benefits. Ronald Reagan's idea of America was McCarthy's 1950s horror story, all white bread and "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. It had NOTHING to do with reality.

That said, you must realize that I don't doubt that British and French Colonialism had a major role to play in the muck that is the Middle East today. But without the US's further interference, I think most of this crap would have been straightened out.

Well, that and the rise of the religious right. I laugh every time some talking head says something about the US being founded on Christian principals. Most of the signers, and all but two of the first 6 presidents were Deists. They believed God had created everything and then split town. That was the whole point of the separation of church and state, that each person would be allowed to worship how and when and where he or she saw fit. And look what we do now.

Sad, isn't it?

Occasionally, it makes me want to run for elected office, but I wouldn't get elected, because frankly, I have too much common sense.

Hi MR

Yeah, I suppose McCarthy must have dismayed a lot of Americans. Have to admit to ignorance of that period of American history, except for a bit of its Civil Rights aspects (which they teach in school, that and the War of Independence...)
On the face of it, there doesn't seem to have been much liberalism in the post-WWII American establishment until Kennedy.
The Americans of that time who were well known in Europe were precisely the group that McCarthy seems to have targetted : film-stars, writers, artists and intellectuals. It seems odd (at least to a Brit) that a politician should round on his own country's chief cultural export and still be able to command public support. (Not even Margaret Thatcher ever suggested that Shakespeare was a social degenerate...)
You seen the film "Pleasantville"? Right or wrong, that film has influenced my perception of the America of the 50s. Before you laugh, remember that the British find it easy to believe in the tyranny of the middle classes; it's the decay-product of our own class-system.
But perhaps I'm over-simplifying what McCarthy etc was about...

What you say about religion seems like an extension of this same idea. The worst aspect of the "Moral Majority" brand of religion is that it stifles thought and individual interpretation. I've met a few (only a few) Americans who treat their religion as a badge of citizenship, defining what "American" (or perhaps more accurately "un-American") means, and definitely not open to debate.

I really abhor militant religion, and feel that the only saving grace of Christianity is its comparative decadence. I respect individual spiritual feelings, and have my own, but condensing them into national identities has nothing to do with God; it's only to do with base humanity and its politics. Nobody should ever go evangelising or proletising. There are people who'll do horrible things (like flying aircraft into tower blocks) if you fuel them with that.

I didn't realise that Washington and Co. were Deists, incidentally. I think I'll go read up on that.

Anyhow, Montana intrigues me too. I reckon I've spent a total of about eighteen months of my life in the US (mostly in and around metals plant, so Rust Belt + bits of the South). In all that time, I've spent only a week west of a line from Minneapolis to San Antonio. That week was in Northern California (which I loved, but everyone tells me doesn't count as the true Western USA).

I only know one person who I could say for sure was from Montana, though he now lives in Pittsburgh, Pa, and I last saw him a couple of years ago. He hails from a place with a name like "Missola" but I can't have got that right because Google doesn't find it. He's among the least talkative people I've ever met (though exceptionally good at his job), so I've been singularly unsuccessful in finding out about your part of the world from that source.

Oops -it's 9 am on a Saturday here, and the Weddell needs coffee. Duty calls...

P.

P,
you know how the US is referred to as the Melting Pot? The problem with such an approach is that when you throw all those different cheeses in a pot, you end up, after much processing, with Velveeta (if you've heard of it), which is "a processed cheese food." It ain't cheese, it's something like it. And the US doesn't have culture, we just fake it well (or not).

Actually, Pleasantville isn't too far off the mark. Scary, eh?

That would be "Missoula." And that is where I am from, and where FG still lives. What, praytell, would this man's name be? If he grew up there, it's quite possible that I knew him, as that is where I grew up, and until very recently, it was a VERY small place to live. And I have a friend who moved to Pittsburgh....
okay, that could be scary.

His name's Rob Nile (pronounced as in river, spelling I'm not quite sure of). Mechanical Engineer. He'll be about 40 now.
(I can guess his age because I remember a bunch of us having the standard "what were you doing when Kennedy was shot?" talk, and him saying "playing in my sandbox". To a Brit, "sandbox" is an unfamiliar term, and so we started making jokes about his parents having really wanted a cat, which he didn't exactly appreciate. He didn't much like being called "Rambo" either - someone on the site was convinced that Rambo was supposedly from Montana. Dunno whether that's right...)
I've sent an e-mail to Pitts colleagues asking for his right spelling and whereabouts. I'll let you know!
...In the meantime, what's Montana like? (I looked up Missoula on the web. Sounds/looks a nice place, and more sophisticated than I'd have expected...
* ducks *
...maybe better shut up while I'm ahead!

P.

Hmmm....a bit older than I am, but I do know a lot of engineers, my dad being one and all. Montana is quite nice, although I'm no longer residing there (I REFUSE to change my name). Alas, the state of Montana's universities do not have any PhD programs in history, so I've been forced to leave my homestate and reside in exile in southern California, Orange County, to be exact. While the weather is nice, that's about the only thing that recommends this area. The traffic is dreadful, people are snooty, and the prices are sky-high. Might I entice you to enter Lil's Atlier? We're currently having a wonderful discussion on Shrub's motives for invading Iraq, and I think you might rather enjoy it. It's here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/F38024?thread=201568&post=2357400#p2357400 just say hello, and if you feel the need to explain, say I sent you. The folk over there are quite nice, generally extremely intelligent, and man, does Matina the Maidbot make a nice !

I was away for a couple of days - just got this.
Oh wow, Lil's Atelier? Do you really think I should?
I've lurked a little there; we all have. But actually posting something before the Great and Good...

...I'll think about it...and meanwhile take a lurkful look...
P.

I just pounded through some of the backthread really quickly.
Looks like the subject's really moved on now, but I saw your own post, mentioning a concern that your husband could be called up in reserve (that's what you meant, yeah?)
That's heavy. These things have a whole different perspective when it's that close.

Yes, actually he's leaving Tuesday for Maryland. At least he'll still be in the US....

And yes, I think you should jump right into Lil's. The denizens of the Atlier (the Salonistas) are a wonderfully nice bunch of people who are very smart and friendly. Last year, when I had my tonsils out, every Salonista made sure to drop by and wish me well. Really, I promise, they don't bite! Good folk. I've even met a couple, Marv and sea. Marv came to Montana last spring, and sea and I had lunch two weeks ago or so...it's scary how much alike we are! Even our RL names are the same. So come on over, the is great, and we throw a swinging party every now and again!

Really, MR, this place gets weirder. I nearly did just jump into the Atelier. But here's what happened...

For some time, I've known that my father's around here someplace. Three or four months ago I mentioned Hootoo to him. He's since said he's signed up, and talked a bit about a few misunderstandings while finding his feet. He also kind of suggested that my stuff wasn't all that funny, after which my disinterest was studied and motivated...

A few minutes back, I half-typed a first Atelier post, then got nervous, and jumped into the backthread looking for a "model" thumbnail, so I could do it just right.

I hit around Post#120 of the current convo, about 3 weeks ago. You were all fascinated with this newbie called Ancient Brit...

You can guess the rest, can't you? Let's put it this way - you can reassure Caerwynn that he ain't HER dad.

The way I feel at the moment, I'm not sure I can ever go there now. On the other hand, it would certainly be a conversation piece!

I don't know whether you warmed to him, in spite of his cussedness, or whether you couldn't stand him. But you might like to know (as a student of American social history) what he gave me as a present recently - "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick, which as you probably know is an account of the early 19thC Nantucket whaling industry. Not too bad for an Ancient Brit, eh?

And there is a way, if you choose to, that you could (all) delight him. Sept 18th is my parents' 50th Wedding Anniversary.

...and now, I reckon I'm going to go lie down for a while.

P.

Wow! that's a bit of the small world theory for you, now isn't it! I am certainly sorry if we offended you in any way. I think maybe sometimes we get a little smug about our internet savvy, and forget that others may not have the experience!

I will, however, let the salonistas know that your folks anniversary is coming up, and maybe we can make it up to him, and to you.

Again, I am terribly sorry if anything that was said offended you.

Hey, absolutely nothing was said to offend! (and having read some of AB's stuff, I reckon most of you were being pretty magnanimous...)

He's not like that in RL, honest. I can't believe it! (Maybe I should take him to one side, yeah?)

In any case, how could I be offended? I know AB wouldn't be (he'd think it was great, that he'd got so famous). As for late-comers like me, whenever any of us lurk or read backthreads, we implicitly agree to swallow what we hear. Code of Honour of flies on the wall everywhere.

In the cold light of another day, though, I still can't get over the coincidence!

It would be great if you could fix it for the Salonistas to say Happy Golden Wedding to Dad (and Mum). And if you want to quietly mention at the same time that you've been talking to "Son of AB", and that the next generation at least might be somewhere close to Atelier-Fit...well, you never know!

Gotta - Thanx!
P.

Right about now, Pinniped, I think there are about half a dozen people administering dope slaps to themselves.

BTW, I live Missoula. I even wrote a guide entry about it...

Thanks FG
I hope everyone knows now that I wasn't offended. No-one should be slapping themselves.
You might all be surprised, though, if you met AB in RL :
Argumentative? - for sure. Pedantic? - not at all. Obsessively tidy? -
You make Missoula sound a special place. One day, maybe...
P.

How'ya doin', MR?

...Brace yourself for a long post. I've had a couple of drinks, and I've got an urge to talk to a social historian.

I finished reading "In the Heart of the Sea" two days ago. It's really affected me (and bored the backsides off my family, got me shunned in the pub, worn out "Nantucket Sleighride" in the car CD-player, etc.)

As I guess you know, the main theme is the wreck of the Essex and the subsequent ordeal of her crew. That part of the story is gripping and harrowing, sure, but the book also gives some idea of early nineteenth century Nantucket, which is more interesting still.

I've long thought that the early history of the USA is ironic. From the Pilgrim Fathers, right through to the advocates and eventual beneficiaries of Independence, it seems to me that America was basically trying to be left alone, to eliminate interference, to build a simple, god-fearing nation. The creators of your country were trying to step aside from the machinations of the Old World. Instead, they founded the most dynamic society the world has known, where nothing has ever stayed the same for more than two or three generations, and never will.

In contrast, European history has a static foundation. The fundamental ideas of Europe were laid down by cultures which had centuries to hone them. A lot of Europeans think that America's shallow, that it hasn't got any proper history. But then a lot of Europeans equate history with Gothic Cathedrals, bubonic plague and people shooting at each other with longbows.

If Nantucket is anything to go by, American social history is as good as anyone's. (For me, at any rate, Britain only got interesting at about the same time. Gothic Cathedrals etc. are nice to look at, say interesting things about faith/fear as a social motor and about mankind's skills development, but kind of stop there. Once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Medieval Europe was not a remotely imaginative or change-receptive place).

It's hard to believe that a tiny place like Nantucket could have built an industry that spanned half the world in about forty years, only to see it wither away again over a similar period. At the time of the Essex and the Globe, it seems that three-quarters of the island's menfolk were undertaking three year tours. How can a society operate like that? I'd really like to understand, too, how their community could reconcile Quaker morality with the extreme commercial pragmatism of the whaling industry. And there are many other questions raised by the book too.

We could talk about that if you like, but going beyond Nantucket, there must be a history in the whole US that's far more profound than Europe ever sees. We tend to get the trivialised Hollywood version, or the squeamish politically-correct schoolbook version.

Are you interested to talk about what interests you? (I'll tell you my American heroes and wondrous events if you like, but not yet. I shouldn't be steering this conversation. You must know amazing stuff that I've never even heard of!)

Go on, waddya say?

P.

(Oh yeah, that other stuff that kicked this conversation off. It fits into the same general theme, of course. Saddam is turning out to be smarter than Bush. No surprises there then, but that's not really the point.

Europe is ever in debt to America, for saving us from Hitler. We tend to forget that. There is something in the contention that America only engages in the affairs of the rest of the world when gross insult makes it do so, be it Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Europe resented American reticence in WWII until Pearl Harbor; now it resents American purposefulness post-9/11. We can debate whether or not Rumsfeld is a dangerous hawk; we can surely agree that Europeans are mostly chicken...)

Actually, not to toot my own horn, P, it's I who am (is? ) the American historian. You can ask MR everything there is about European history but if you want to know about the rise of modern America...I'll leave that pompous bit unsaid.

I think the Puritans--a bunch of narrow-minded religious zealots who had no idea how to survive in a new land (they didn't even bring farming or fishing implements, for crying out loud!) would be mightily surprised at being the forefathers of America. First, even to be lumped in with the Southern colonists--people they considered lazy near-Papist drunken heathens--would be shocking. Then, to be given credit for the founding of our modern nation would leave them spinning in their graves. Yes, they had a healthy respect for money (and no problem stealing land, food, and goods from the Indians) but they would not abide the eventual relaxation of morality and the rise of religious pluralism.

Frankly, it galls me to see the Puritans given any credit in American history. They weren't the first to arrive on northern shores--the Vikings came centuries before, not to mention the Spaniards in Florida and the Southwest--and their original colony was a dismal failure. Only with the subsequent immigration of your countrymen did New England survive. The only freedom they wanted was for themselves and those of like-minded belief.

But pardon me, I'll let MR answer this one...