This 'N That

I haven't posted much because, well...

I'm focusing on what I can do, I guess.  That is, I'm pretty disturbed by what I see in the news...but for the most part all I can do is vote (and contact my Congress person...which given his response last time I did, isn't going to do much good.) So I'll just show my displeasure with my vote.  And if enough other people feel the same way, then come mid-terms things may change.


I sort of feel as though things are so far past f'd up that there's no point yelling and screaming about it any more.  The people I'd want to persuade are clearly not interested in listening, or they wouldn't be doing the things they're doing in the first place.  You sort of have to be willfully ignorant (or in a pretty serious bubble) to be doing the things these guys are doing.

So whatever.  The drumbeat of war is beating, even though nobody sane wants that. 

Or rather, as Sun Tzu says -

 "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

If you truly have that level of knowledge, going to war is not necessarily a gamble.  Or it's a calculated gamble that may get the result you want.  Yet who can say that they really know the enemy and know themselves?  Historically, we're pretty lousy at that...and there's nothing worse than getting all aggressive, thinking it will be a "short, victorious war" and winding up in the deadly slog of WWI.  Maybe if you have the talent of Otto von Bismarck you can accurately assess the situation and make it happen, but if you don't you wind up losing far more than you gain.

Given our track record for the past half a century or so (Vietnam, OEF, OIF) I do not think there's any grounds for feeling confident in how well we "know the enemy and know yourself".

Honestly?  Eh...it could be Trump is an able negotiator and that acting like a crazy person will somehow end the decades long tension with North Korea.  Maybe. And even though those game theory studies show that trying to be a harda$$ tends to backfire and make things worse, maybe in the real world things will be different and what he does will work.  (I'm saying that in order to acknowledge my preconceptions on such things, and to be open to the possibility that I could be wrong). 

In some ways, I do hope I'm wrong.  I hate feeling all doom and gloom.  On the other hand, I feel there are some potential parallels between Trump and Wilhelm Kaiser II, who alienated most of Germany's allies, came across as a threat to England, and contributed greatly to the disastrous political environment leading up to WWI.

I'm not in a position to do anything about that, though...so I guess I'm just going to work on some more homework and watch more Naruto or something.