On Monday morning, May 9, at 8:05 ET, I will be talking to the King Dude, the one and only Mike Church. Much marginalized by the “DeceptiCONS,” as he calls the custodians of allowable opinion in contemporary America, Mike is “a man, a myth and a machine of clear Constitutional thought.”
Topics: We’ll touch on my new book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. You can pre-order the book from the publisher. In about 10 days, it will be available from Amazon too. If you pre-order from the publisher, shipping is free, where ever you live (South Africa included).
Incredibly, some Republican Party media megaphones have been making the case that Bush deserves credit for the actions of Obama in eliminating Osama bin Laden. There is something particularity rank about this tack. It is one thing to credit the operatives in the field, but quite another to commend a far-removed gas bag like Genghis Bush with the kill. That is if you support what some are calling an extra-judicial killing. A Gallup survey indicates that “More than 9 in 10 Americans approve of the U.S. military action that killed Osama bin Laden on Sunday.”
What will it take for certain Republicans to give credit where credit is due? Would BHO need to switch parties (a minor ideological conversion, really).
The same Gallup poll shows, however, that, “Thirty-five percent say he deserves a great deal of credit and another 36% say he deserves ‘a moderate amount’ of credit. More than a quarter say he does not deserve much or any credit at all.”
This is probably a function of the general antipathy toward Obama’s policies, and not an objective assessment of the operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Rest assured that if something had gone wrong, the sitting president would have been blamed. “Former President Jimmy Carter knows about that,” notes the Huffington Post. “In 1980, Carter approved a plan to rescue the American hostages in Iran that ended in failure and left eight American servicemen dead. The botched mission was cited as one factor in Carter’s defeat when he ran for re-election.”
The attempt to drag Bush into this says something about the convergence of the two parties on matters of foreign policy. Obama has “embraced his inner neocon.” As a consequence, Republicans have few bones to pick with the president on the foreign policy front. What remains in their bag of political tricks is to make hay of his exotic origins (birth certificate), or to claim that his predecessor paved the way for (what they perceive to be) his recent success.
In any event, Bush’s military signature is the Daisy Cutter.
Navy SEALs are incredible specimens, both intellectually and physically. Every interview, over the past few days, with members of this elite unit, has demonstrated the superman qualities SEALs possess. They even look like cut-out images from an episode of “The Unit.” It’s a shame that these magnificent men must place their skills at the service of the state. I suspect, however, that if you are SEAL material, you don’t have many options.
American men have endured decades of emasculation—legal and cultural—in civilian life. Hobbies and work that require such a perfect amalgamation of mental and physical prowess, as being a SEAL demands, are hard to come by. Or are illegal. These men are … manly men; they are chivalrous and disciplined. These qualities are penalized in the feminized workplace culture that has been crafted by the feminists manning Human Resources (Y chromosome carriers included). Frankly, manly qualities are being bred-out of men.
(HR makes my contact behind enemy lines—the American corporation, which works a lot like the US State does—take “Diversity” tests and PC quizzes to keep him in-line.)
Punish a little boy time and again at school for “Bang-bang you’re dead,” of for playing “Cowboys and Indians,” and then teach him do so to his own tyke—and you get generations of girly-boys (down to the fussy sounding falsettos with which many heterosexual men now speak).
I even wondered in “Manly No More,” whether it was possible that “the feminization of society over the last 20 to 30 years is changing males, body and mind. Could the subliminal stress involved in sublimating one’s essential nature be producing less manly men?”
In any event, if one were so endowed, where could a man find private-sector work or hobbies that allowed him to put into practice the skills he would use as a SEAL? That is, without being arrested by the powers that be, or sent to de-Nazification camps/programs (Dr. Phil, anger management, etc).
Although Demi Moore kept getting in the way (and blocking views of Viggo Mortensen), I watched “G.I. Jane” many times over for the impossible training. Of course, not even Amazonian women should be considered for this kind of Special Operations team where, esprit de corps is everything. Fortunately, “G.I. Jane” was just fiction; women are precluded from the Navy SEALs.
UPDATE I (May 8): I think Robert G., below, has been reading and contributing to this (moderated) site long enough to know what a traditionalist means when she points to manhood. Mr. Glisson’s mentors are certainly of a piece with the manhood described. But there is more.
I was referring to something else SEALs seem to possess. We’re talking here about different expressions of manhood. However, the culture has prohibited open discussion of the things my post addresses, very specifically. These are a combination in some men (and certain women too) of qualities that make them scale mountains as the explorers of old did, take to the seas to discover new places, and slay dragons, to use a metaphor.
Have we forgotten the superman (one among a few hundred kids) who graduated with us, and who managed, with equal easy, higher math (in my days they divided us into groups according to ability), marathons, while charming everyone around him with his drive and decency? I remember the specimen! And I am not going to pretend he didn’t exist so as to make everyone feel better. I am quite able to live with the reality that I was not of that species; others prefer to deny that there is such a specimen.
Mr. Glisson seems to want me to say that such supermen end up as killers for the state. As a young girl who partook of the mixed-sex scouts in Israel, I remember so well our 16-year-old group leader. A mere boy, who, when we were lost in the scrubby mountain range of Israel’s tiny interior, in temperatures of 120 degrees, with one water container per child—how with absolute cool, this boy navigated back to base, using the primitive navigational instrument of the day—the compass—sans cellphones and 911 helis hovering above.
On his back he carried the kids who passed out for lack of water. He was already about 6 feet and 3 inches tall. I was but 12, but I recall looking at his face to see if I should be fearful. His young face reflected the enormous responsibility he had undertaken—and was given. But by looking at him, I also knew he’d get us back to base. I even recall his name: Avner.
Doesn’t any one remember that kind of kid? Serious, studious, focused—nothing he couldn’t do??? I doubt these types are allowed to flex their mental and physical muscle to the fullest these days—and certainly not in the repulsively politicized, feminized scouts. The Avners of today, if they persist in contributing to society to the fullest—in the scouts, for instance—would be programmed not to show superior skill (lest stupid, fat kids be made to feel bad); not to comfort sad kids, not to mentor kids like themselves, in case he risked transmitting and excess of machismo competency. Blah, blah.
UPDATE II: rch’s note: It’s succinct, apolitical, and to the point; as you would except from One of These Men. I’m proud to know him too. Enough said.
UPDATE III: Mr. Glisson and I always have a good dialogue; between us we get to the soul of the subject. Each SEAL is an individualist, capable of becoming a leader at the drop of a hat. It is sad that this kind of core character is under assault. This pushes men—whose biology and mentality craves the excitement and the challenge—to serve the state.
“… By the estimate of “Yahoo! Search Trends,” teens ages 13-17 … made up 66 percent of searches for ‘who is osama bin laden?’” “The figures give a revealing insight into the lack of current affairs and general knowledge among teenagers,” quipped the Daily Mail’s correspondent.
The twits were indeed atwitter:
Tara: I’m probably retarded for asking this, but who is Osama and why is it good that he died?
Cory: Who is Osama and why is it important we killed him?
Shawn: who is Osama Bin Laden? Is he in the band as well?
Reptilian brains like these took their spring-break behavior to the streets when the news about bin Laden’s demise broke. They too are who we are.
Why not own our atavism? There will always be a marginalized, underbelly of genius and ingenuity in America. But for the rest, we have morphed into a militant, mindless people.
In its clodhopper’s traipse around the world, our military has caused the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, squandered trillions of our debased dollars, destroyed at least two countries, and crippled the American economy. Had the ‘Pac Men Of The Universe’ undertaken and achieved a precision operation after 9/11—it would be worth celebrating. But not now.
Conga lines of jubilant Americans must, by sad necessity, give way to welfare lines. If recent news reports are to be believed, one in seven Americans stands in-line for food stamps from the government.
That is now the alpha and omega of American life. …”
