Know Your Sith Lords

Dick Cheney said that his critics think he's Darth Vader. Certainly not. Lord Vader was once a good person. A more appropriate Sith Lord comparison would be to one who used fear and lies to boost himself a level of power that was nearly despotic: Darth Sidious. I realize that this analogy is imperfect as well. Sidious had, at least, a superficial charm. While I can accuse Cheney of a great deal, unctuousness and smarm have never been among his crimes. Cheney is a taciturn, charmless killer, and a more apt movie villain analog for him might be Karl Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me or Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs, but, as long as we're playing in George Lucas's ballpark, Darth Sidious will have to do.

As for George W. Bush, well, he doesn't get to be Lord Vader either. Whenever someone failed Vader, Vader killed him. Bush keeps promoting his incompetents. Maybe we can cast Bush as one of those Trade Federation guys that Vader wipes out in Revenge of the Sith. They were malicious, vain, ignorant, and given to trusting the wrong people. If we could leave Lucas behind, and if Bush developed better taste in clothes, we might just be able to compare Bush to Brett Easton Ellis's Patrick Bateman. ("I like to torture Arabs. Do you know I'm utterly insane?")

Or maybe Bush is Max Cady or maybe...

This is making me sad.

What Losing Means

Matt Yglesias has a great post about how it's impossible to separate military outcomes from policy outcomes, using Tet as an example:

The goal of the VC/NVA military campaign was to persuade the United States of America to stop backing the Republic of Vietnam regime in order to precipitate the collapse of the ROV government and unite the Vietnamese nation under the leadership of the Communist government in Hanoi.

The Tet Offensive did not, on its own, accomplish any of those things. It did, however, achieve major strides in that direction. It was, therefore, a success. It wasn't a "military" failure but a "political" success, it was just a success.

Read the whole thing. It's very nicely stated. And remember it the next time someone says the Iraq War (or the Afghan war for that matter) was a military success but a political failure. They were neither.

Saturn After Dark

No comment required.

A Saner Relationship With Sports

The Oakland Raiders lost again today, 34-20 to the San Francisco 49ers. It was ugly. The Raiders once again gave up a halftime lead, committing turnovers and losing any sense of rhythm. Ah, well. So it goes. For the next few months, I'll root for Peyton Manning and the Colts. It's more fun. I'll leave the Raiders to get on with the losing it seems they have to do, checking in occasionally to look for signs of improvement.

I mention this because of the exaggerated sense of disappointment that I'm picking up from some quarters of Raider fandom. To a degree, I understand fannish anger at what looks like a another lost season in which the Raiders have, if anything, regressed from the Kerry Collins era. We all still remember the Gannon years, which were simultaneously great and tragic in ways that only the Greeks could chronicle. At the end of that era, the Raiders got old fast. They lost too many players (Gannon, Rice, Brown, Romo, Garner, Parella, Adams, Barton, Rod Woodson, Charles Woodson, and others), and the ones playing underneath them were in no position to just pick up and carry on. Attempts to reload fizzled partly because any plan that requires Kerry Collins to play consistent football indicates a need for a new plan, but mostly because at the core--the offensive line and the defensive front seven--the Raiders no longer had the players to compete week-to-week. Those kinds of problems can't be fixed with high profile acquisitions. They require good scouting, good coaching, and consistent dedication to getting the little things right. Until the offensive line plays as a unit, and the defensive line and linebackers can play with both aggression and awareness, not much else will matter for the Raiders.

Now I could go over all the things the Raiders need to do in order to become a competitive team again. (I'd say prepare for a youth movement, which to a large degree has already started, because with the rising salary cap, I don't think the Raiders will be able to snag too many flashy free agents in the next few years.) But none of that really matters. I don't run the Oakland Raiders, and no one in the organization is listening to me. (And why should they listen, really? What the hell do I know about running a football team?) Instead, I want to put in a word for sanity, a plea to relax for your own sakes and to find the courage to let the Raiders go, at least for a while.

Quoting George Carlin:

You know the best thing I did for myself during the past five years? I told sports to go take a flying fuck. I was fed up with the way I related to professional sports, so I reordered the relationship on my own terms. I became a little more selective.

I couldn't believe how much time I had wasted watching any old piece of shit ballgame that happened to show up on TV. I must have thought there was some inborn male obligation to tune in and root every time a bunch of sweaty assholes got together to mix it up in a stadium somewhere.

I also realized I was wasting perfectly good emotional energy by sticking with my teams when they were doing poorly. My rooting life was scarcely better than those Cubs fans who think it's a sign of character to feel shitty all the time. It's absurd.

I decided it's not necessary to suffer and feel crappy just because my teams suck. What I do now is cut 'em loose for awhile. I simply let them go about losing, as I go about living my life. Then, when they've improved, and are doing well once again, I get back on board and enjoy their success. Yeah, I know, I can hear it: diehard, asshole loyal sports fans screaming, "Front runner!" Goddamn right! Don't be so fuckin' juvenile. Teams are supposed to provide pleasure and entertainment, not depression and disappointment.

I can't improve on what Carlin said right there. Folks, the Raiders are going to have to do some losing. Let's hope it's not too long a dark period, but it might be. There's a lot of work for Art Shell to do. (And I actually think that, irrespective of this year's record, Shell should stay. The Raiders do not need to waste another season bringing in yet another head coach to switch everyone around all over again, though a new offensive coordinator might be a fair idea. Vermeil and Gibbs were allowed to survive their disasterous first seasons, and got much better results after a year or two, despite working for owners who were every bit as out of it as Al Davis is now said to be.) Building through the draft and getting a system fully ingrained takes time. If you want to watch in order to see how it's coming along, fine, but don't expect much, and don't let the failures ruin your week. Find some other pastimes to tide you through. There's a big world beyond the gridiron. Now's your chance to go find it.

As Close As You Can Get To Pissing Me Off

Just a small thing that's bugging me, gang:

Lexus commercials, already given to using the odious construction "certified pre-owned" in place of used, are now claiming that their "certified pre-owned" vehicles are the closest thing you can get to a new car. No, you hustling prick, the closest thing I can get to a new Lexus is a new Lexus. New means unused. All used cars are equally far away from newness. That's why the instant you drive the car off the lot, they won't let you trade it right back in for full value. Try the "closest thing to a new Lexus" line on the car salesman after you've driven the car off the lot and see how far you get. He'll say, "Bullshit, that fuckin' car is used, but can I interest you in this pre-owned vehicle? It's the closest thing to new!"

Embracing Unpopularity

I caught Dennis Miller on Jon Stewart last night. Miller started out funny, but when the subject turned to the administration he embraced a view that I once assumed Miller would be smart enough to see for the rubbish it is. I can't quote it, but it went something like this: yes Bush was unpopular, but Miller discovered through his reading that two other presidents, Lincoln and Truman, were unpopular, and history judged them kindly. Stewart seemed slightly skeptical of the comparison, but Miller insisted on holding to it.

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis, the old you would have seen through the logic of this idea as if it were used Neutrogena. Schopenhauer expressed Miller's sentiment this way: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." The more popular variant is, "They laughed at the Wright Brothers". True, but, as Carl Sagan pointed out, they also laughed at the Marx brothers. It's not true that all truth is ignored or ridiculed before it is accepted. Einstein's theories were neither ignored nor violently opposed. Nobody gunned for Achimedes or Da Vinci. (Actually, a soldier, looting the city where Archimedes lived, did kill him; but the soldier had no idea who Archimedes was.) Madam Curie's only enemy was the element she discovered: Radium.

Besides, many promoters of ideas are either violently opposed or ignored because they deserve it. Yes, people laughed at the Wright brothers, but they also laughed at the hundreds of other cranks and would-be inventors who promoted their ridiculous attempts at flying machines. Yes, Lincoln and Truman were unpopular in their eras but vindicated by history; but consider for a moment Nixon, Harding, Buchanon, Hoover, Andrew Johnson, Bush ancestor Franklin Pierce or Bush the First for that matter. All did things (or failed to do things) in office which made them widely disliked in their time, and history has decided that these men earned their imfamy.

A thing to bear in mind if you come in for public criticism--people may laugh at or attack you because they can't accept how right you are; but you must consider that they also may laugh at or attack you because you're either really fucking funny or dangerously wrong. Dennis Miller, much like his friend George W., is stuck on option A, unwilling to consider the (much more likely) option B.

Honestly, Dennis, do you seriously believe that historians are going to look back at the botched response to Katrina, the hideously mismanaged and horribly misconceived Iraq War, the massive public debt and corporate scandals, the torture and the killing, the rapid diminution of personal liberty and privacy, the degredation of the Atlantic alliance and the foreign policy order of the last half century, the ruin of America's image in the world as a good-faith and rational actor in world affairs, and conclude that there really was a pony under all this shit? If you can believe that, I have to wonder what President Bush would have to do to curdle your faith in him.

Crisis Over

Well, for anyone still listening out there, the fiscal crisis that made the last four months a valley of woe has abated. I'm not rich, but I'm no longer counting coins every time I have to buy milk at the store either. This experience didn't kill me, but the stress of it probably took a few years off my life. (Of course, if the Republican regimes continue, it's not like I'll want them back.)

It is good to know that under the stress I can still be productive. I should be able to start submitting Escape Velocities in a month or two. I also finished my new action/adventure screenplay, which isn't too far from ready to mail. Matt Damon and Ed Zwick fucked me on the title I wanted to use, so I'll have to think of something else to call it. Damn you, Damon. Damn you and your progeny to the deepest icy bowels of Hell, you miserable Oscar-winning, math promoting, Project Greenlight producing son of a bitch! I'm sorry, but Blood Diamond really was a fucking good title. Anyway, I see Christian Bale in the lead; bitterspice is pushing Aaron Eckhart.

For my next trick, I'll get myself arrested by the administration and see if I can manage to continue high-level literary production while being imprisoned and tortured in Eastern Europe.