Quote of the Day

This is actually a sort of double quote, from today's NYT article on the Libyan rebellion:

Anwar Fekini, a rebel leader from the mountainous region in western Libya, speaking by telephone from Tunis. “If you can call any mobile number in Tripoli, you will hear in the background the beautiful sound of the bullets of freedom.”

Phone calls to several Tripoli residents from different neighborhoods confirmed widespread gunfire and explosions.

Thanks, NYT, your humor is dry like a martini, like the desert, like the moon.

Contrast

Two items in the NYT this morning stand in sharp relief to one another. First, there is a review of the latest Call of Duty video game, a first-person shooter in which the player takes part in any number of fictional yet historically-framed gunfights during the Cold War. In the other, Bob Herbert writes elegeically about Restrepo, a documentary released earlier this Fall about a USMC platoon holding a tiny outpost in Afghanistan.

Together, these two pieces touch on strong feelings, sometimes conflicted, that I have about the military.

For those who don't know already, I was an army brat. My dad was in the US Army band, but also trained to fight as a solider like everyone else. We lived on or near army bases, and I don't bat an eye at the sight of tanks, personnel carriers, artillery, or even a simple fighting man in uniform. That last one, of course, is the most deadly.

I also play shooting games, wandering through three-dimensional palaces of pop-up targets, throwing switches, dropping virtual grenades while carrying an arsenal of assault rifles, pistols, and the occassional target designator with which I can call in orbital bombardment.

I tend towards the more science fictional and fantastical games because they are far enough removed from reality that I can discuss them with friends as a diversion, like any other, as if I were watching a fantasy film or a Z-grade zombie masterpiece. When I try to play the Call of Duty games, I can't help but feel the tug of empathy, knowing that actual soldiers, guys the age of my baby brother, are in actual wars actually shooting and being shot at by other people.

I wouldn't go so far as to say there's a danger that I, a woman in her thirties, will fail to distinguish between fantasy and reality. It's not like I'm going to pick up a gun in real life and set out, bullets blazing. It's more like, I have trouble squaring my knowledge that the fantasy sets out to be realistic yet entertaining, and the reality is much more terrible than could ever be entertaining.

Then again, I know a lot of soliders play these games. They play to practice squad work, the play for fun, they play to get psyched up. the US Army happily provides Xboxes and a variety of games. Even my brother, a Coast Guard reservist, has told me his team plays a certain Call of Duty level to practice their vessel boarding procedures.

I decided a while ago I'd no longer delve into Manhattanite intellecual hand-wriging over the effect and interplays these games have on our culture and political direction. I'm also less concerned about being an outlier demographic - I play because Iam pertty good at these games and it's an outlet for my competitive side.

That said, I still feel a jar, a disconnect, something, when I see games that position themselves as realistic in tone if not outcome, and think about the thousands of people, men and women alike, serving overseas, whose perspective would provide the ultimately objective distinction between fantasy and reality.

The Real David Brooks and his Magic Green Jacket

It's official: David Brooks is a Democrat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/opinion/27brooks.html

Tea in a Tizzy

I'll say up front that I've been skeptical about the Tea Party activists practically since their inception. I've been skeptical about how they were formed, skeptical about their politics, and skeptical about whether they even qualify as a political party. I've debated with a paramour what their fate will be; he's afraid they'll actually gain power, while I've long thought that eventually they will get co-opted.

On this last point, I may be a little less certain. However, after reading this article in the NYT, it's still hard for me to take them seriously as a political party.

A tax code limited to the number of words in the US Constitution? Seriously? Would you like to build a baseball stadium based on the total number of hot dogs sold in the first year of baseball history? The tax code is a tool for the government to encourage and reward behavior, and it applies to citizens and corporations alike. Do you really think you'll have enough room in such a limited document to, say, require corporations to re-invest money in the US instead of parking it off shore? 4500 words is about twenty double-spaced pages. That's not a tax code, that's a term paper. The best you might hope for is tax code haiku.

Divine intervention? At least they're trying to manage this part of it. Did you know that it's possible to be fiscally conservative and not believe in God? Did you know that many people who do believe in God do not believe in divine intervention, at least not in the sense that it is commonly intended?

You want to promote States' Rights? Really? So if a given state enacts strong gun control measures, you won't run up to the Federal level to repeal it? Politically, it makes sense to prefer States' Rights, because then you can make incremental progress. However, every States' Rights proponent I've ever known, liberal and conservative alike, drops that plank as soon as they stop getting what they want at the state level.

The Tea Party is full of symbolic ideas. They are going to collapse if they ever obtain any real power. They do bring up some very valid issues, but they barely have an affirmative platform (until I read this article, I didn't think they had an affirmative platform at all).

So go on Tea Party. Bitch about the government. Bitch about taxes, bitch about the economy. Maybe one day, when you grow up, you'll be able to do a better job, but until then, keep trying.

Article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/us/politics/13tea.html