I generally agree with McWhorter too, but just want to point out that we do still have rules against profanity that are rigorously enforced, that can cost you your job and career, etc. It's just that the specific words that are considered taboo have changed.
There was an old Star Trek episode where they find two planets at war. But instead of actually fighting a computer calculates how many people would have died in the war and the citizens of each society go to suicide booths dutifully and avoid all the destruction. The Enterprise is appalled and destroys the computer, saying that if they are forced to face the hellish reality of war they might forge true peace.
But I wonder, what if the computer decided that one side won the war, would the other side commit true mass suicide. What if it said that some people were killed but the rest were conquered, would they change their government and be ruled by the foreign power? What if one side felt the computer simulation was wrong, would it dispute the results? How would it do so, by starting a real war?
Even if war is very destructive, that just raises the issue of "war is so destructive you should give into our demands rather then risk war."
Lookin at say the Ukraine war, it's clear that Putin overestimated how easy it would be to depose the Ukranian government. It's also clear that the Ukranians underestimated Russian strength and overestimated western assistance. If people could have seen how this would end up, they probably would have either avoided war altogether or signed a peace a month in, but they disagreed on what the facts of the conflict were.
There is one aspect of warfare that I think is hard to replicate outside of it. The TRUTH factor. Who is your friend and who is your enemy? Who is competent and who is not? What organizing principles and weapons work and which ones do not?
Just as capitalism answers those questions for market goods, war answers those questions for martial strength. Some have said that this war weakens Russia, and it does in some way. But in another way its going to burn off a lot of the beuracratic rot and leave a veteran experience army.
I don't know, Vietnam didn't exactly leave the US with an effective veteran army. These things are complex and the incentives in Russia favor loyalty over competence.
1) Drastically increased the effectiveness of trauma wound care.
2) Refined aerial combat doctrine.
3) Helped switch America from a conscript army to an all volunteer professional force.
Not worth the costs, but there are some benefits.
I just dislike when I hear people like Lindsay Graham talk with glee about killing Russians. Killing Russians does in fact weaken Russia in some way, but not any way that matters to us. It's not like Russia is going to run out of manpower, you kill a million and there are millions more. The loss in Russian manpower doesn't seem to me to make up for all the lessons learned they are going to walk away with. Just as the Red Army of 1945 was a lot stronger than the Red Army of 1941 despite huge losses.
Our house doesn't have Cable TV, but we have streaming. My mother watches lot of it, and I don't think it's that different then if we had cable. She still gets her TV News fix by watching Youtube of CNN or whatever.
There are of course differences between episodic TV on a schedule vs instant streaming, but its still a person sitting in a chair and consuming what's on the screen.
It's funny because the focus of the post wasn't so much the death of TV (which is true), but rather the very different form and style of media that the youngs consume, which is predominantly youtube, tiktok and insta, i.e. non-serialized content. In other words, the future isn't necessarily streaming either--and net adds to streamium is slowing considerably--but something else entirely. To the extent that "we are what we eat" from a media and information-mix standpoint, the youngs will be different, and the change will be striking (bc the transition is non-linear).
'57 Channels and Nothin' On' was a Springsteen song from the early '90s. It was and is the same dynamic with today's TV/streaming. More content is in theory good. But the average quality goes down and it's often difficult to find the good stuff.
I'm a little skeptical the cop using four letter words in the Floyd situation made any difference except that it indicates a likely attitude of the cop.
Similarly, I don't think vulgar language is disrespectful in all situations though it seems more likely it always is among strangers, especially by cops.
I have been trying to get my mother to ditch the satellite television package for the last 5 years. Everything she watches is easily found on the streaming services/internet. It is like talking to a brick wall.
> I know that we do not necessarily need one more screed against the progressive left. But I think that Fr. Kiely makes a point that I think is worthy of emphasis—the extent to which beliefs become fashionable in certain crowds. I have said before that I think affluent teenagers in the United States find it fashionable to claim LGBTQ+ sexual identities. And it has become fashionable to be anti-capitalist and anti-Israel.
A couple of the phenomena in play here (there are many others of course):
The most interesting part is: people on both sides of the divide are experiencing these things, but do not know it. Planet Earth, 2023, is a head trip if one looks at it from the top down.
I don't think there will be nostalgia for cable TV either. And I agree that it is dying. What I do think is valuable is the concept of the entertainment bundle, and I do not think that any of the streaming services have figured out that bundle yet. If I pay for a bundle of Netflix, Hulu, Max, Prime, then there is always something to watch and it is a useful bundle. If I only pay for one of them, and I don't like the shows on that service, I am more likely to cancel. So I think the future is more bundling because that will make the subscriptions much stickier.
Cable TV is a bundle of channels. The cable companies also figured out how to make it extremely difficult to cancel or change your service - it is a wonder that this hasn't gotten more attention from competition authorities. But that model will eventually permeate the streaming world and cable TV will go gently into the night.
I agree with McWhorter. Similar to AK’s AI Essay Grader, I wonder whether it would be feasible to train an AI to scan police body cam and dash cam footage (or even just audio) and develop a police interaction civility scale (ranging from civil to extreme dominance/hostility). Even if the outcomes were published as aggregate data for a police unit or force, it could lead to better police/civilian interactions. There are also lots of possibilities to incentivize good behavior once the behavior is tracked and measured.
"I think that the case for TV dying is even stronger."
Lol.
The future of CBS,NBC,ABC,FOX will likely change but there's no evidence of them going away. And the fact that I have about 5x as many antenna TV stations in the last ten years speaks more loudly that this is not like newspapers.
It is true that cable is fading but that's because it is being replaced by Netflix and other on-demand subscriptions. Are you saying that ISN'T TV?
I expect some of the on-demand providers to fail but that's only because there are so many trying to capture that market.
Finally, the lol. While it's possible sports will all go pay per view, that seems unlikely. Some type of live "TV" will continue to make money on that.
McWhorter is on the money when he says "...police officers should not use profanity in ways that connote hostility, impatience, or dominance." And so are you, in my opinion, about the idea that the indiscriminate use of profanity demonstrates lack of respect for others. Instead of lifting up or being constructive, it is yet another way we ruin and vulgarize human interactions.
I was on a jury this summer in my Texas college town and we got to see pretty much the entire encounter between two police officers and two individuals not following instructions via the body cams. The officers were incredibly calm and polite the entire time, never using profanity, always using "sir" and "ma'am", etc. We acquitted the defendant (of the somewhat odd charge of interfering with a peace officer - there was no "criminal negligence" in the defendant's actions, a required element) but I also left with a great respect for our local PD for how it handled a difficult situation. Body cams are a fantastic thing and should be used widely. If we hadn't seen that, I think it would have been a much harder case.
A lot of cops seem angry all the time. They don't just direct traffic; they yell at you if you show the very slightest uncertainty about where it is they want you to go, e.g. in an intersection they've closed down for some reason. KEEP MOVING!!
The other day a patrolman ran me off the road, basically, and was mad about it. It was a two-lane street, heavy with traffic at that time, no shoulder, curbed but cut at intervals for various medical buildings and shopping centers and such*, with really nowhere for me to go - so when the cop came bearing down on me, siren going, honking - I didn't figure he wanted me to be the lead car of this pursuit, you know. So after fifty feet or so, as soon as able, I pulled over to the right in the driveway of an office building so he could get on past me. Well, wouldn't you know it, that was the driveway he wanted to enter. Then he really went ballistic!
It was hard for me to imagine whatever scenario he was responding to in that office building, should have made him so pre-emptively jumpy.
On the other hand, I witnessed sort of an opposite-George-Floyd situation last year, when a homeless druggie briefly inhabited a vacant apartment in my building, unbeknownst to everyone. This might have continued but he ruined it for himself by hollering in the middle of the night in our perfectly peaceful courtyard. Someone called the police. Two came to deal with him, black guy, and a woman. That black cop patiently listened to the crazy person talk for about 2 hours. What's more, unlike a lot of policemen who if you ask them, what's going on 30 feet from your house (or across the foyer, in this case) - well, you're the last person it would please them to say a word to. But this cop told me plainly what was going on. Finally they took him off without incident.
*The ordinary street grid, sufficient even 10 years ago, is showing the strain of population growth in that city.
One of my brothers was LEO and recently retired. We've had many discussions about police work, the good/bad, etc. I wonder why anyone would want to be a cop (and recruitment now is harder than ever). But we need them and they need us (law abiding folk). It's hard to know what caused that patrolman to behave like that towards you. Maybe his previous call was to an accident fatality, maybe his spouse told him she wanted a divorce, perhaps he was on his way to a violent situation, or maybe he's just a jerk and shouldn't be in law enforcement. Who knows, but in any case it sounds like he was out of line. I'm glad you also experienced the better side, the human side, of police work, too. More of that goes on than we hear about.
Impossible task: in Austin, during I guess the BLM protests, the police were provided with "beanbag rounds" to fire at people who were shoving them or trying to break through barricades or whatever.
I mean, I am pretty sure these guys don't carry beanbags around in their pockets all the time.
So on the given day, they shot these beanbags at people, who got bruised and inevitably sued the city and got a fantastic payday because such people - the sort of folks who, maybe their brother was brandishing a weapon the 129th time they called the police about him, and this time the cops shot him: payday for the fam! - always get paydays out of the city because we have to pretend the city couldn't hire a good lawyer.
But then beyond that, the local DA decided to charge a whole bunch of these cops - 17! - with assault. The crime of shooting beanbags. Which were issued by more or less the same government entity that employs the DA.
Basically, if you as a cop showed up to work that day, you were showing up to be charged with an offense by your law-and-order bosses.
They dropped the charges, finally - after letting them hang over those dudes for 3 years.
Indeed. I don't know anyone in that line of work - it is something most people are allergic to, and allergic to directing their kids to, in the enclaves where I have lived. I am aware that the "type" I described, while not the type of man I prefer, may be what the job demands. I would only suggest that the degree to which our society is collapsing, means we may not get the kind of policemen we might personally prefer. This actually seems pretty evident to me.
I mean, no offense to George Floyd, who actually doesn't seem like the worst of thugs by any measure - but who wants to spend all their time marinating in the world of drugs and dysfunction and violence? Hopefully those for whom it is a call - but we're making it awfully hard for normal guys who feel that call.
I got to see a pro-Palestinian demonstration close up a few months ago in Toronto, when I needed to cross right through it to get to a subway station. It was very much like our anti-Vietnam war protests in the sixties. While there was a generous proportion of swarthy middle easterners, about half the crowd was wholesome-looking high school and college-aged kids, all excited as if they were on their way to a concert or some other peer event. It obviously a trendy event for these kids, who seemed to be from the same suburban, aspirant intellectual class that made up the early anti-Vietnam War demos - only without the smart Jewish kids who were so prominent in the 60s.
No one can predict or control these youth fevers, whether it's the Beatles, BLM or LGBQT.
That exact atmosphere prevailed circa 1990-91 at my college campus: finally, a chance to do something reminiscent of '60s protests (a very well-photographed phenomenon, which I think was more crucial than the actual attitudes or ideas involved). "No blood for oil!"
Blood for oil: a good slogan. A statement of fact, really. But not really clear where you were going to go with that ... The rejection (whether based in style or substance) of materialism in the earlier youth movement, was not revived; or if it was, it had pitifully few fans (such as myself, candidly).
We too lived in a petrostate. And so many of our relatives had had a hand in the Western development of drilling in the Middle East. Even as far back as the '20s: I have a cache of postcards, printed menus, maps, and train schedules from my husband's deep East Texas great-grandfather - from Persia, Syria, Lebanon, whatever Iraq was called ... he worked for the railroad company. My own corporate lawyer uncle was annually in Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi or Nigeria or Libya ... and beyond, even Kabul. Ditto my only other uncle, though he drilled the wells.
They did the work to bring out the oil, to move it, to market it.
Is it ever a good idea for people to profit by not doing their own work? Is this not one of the lessons of the American South?
You create the conditions in which people are not going to play nice. Of course there would be blood for oil! How ridiculous to imagine there would not be - if you really care who they sell it to!
All "youth fevers" are not created equal. I knew at the time we were only play-acting.
And when I think of where Osama Bin Laden was, all that time - it is hard in retrospect not to feel that the Long War in particular was in some sense play-acting too.
Re: profanity, quite a few people I think look at it from exactly the opposite direction that you do. That is, the use of profanity is a sign of familiarity. You don't curse around your boss or a teacher because it's against the rules, but around friends, you can let your hair down a bit and say what you really think. Cursing around someone (not to be confused with cursing at someone) is therefore a sign that you consider that person to be, if not a friend exactly, at least an equal and someone you don't need to observe every letter of every social convention around. I'm not arguing in favor of your view or this one, just pointing it out.
I am tempted to agree with McWhorter when it comes to the police, though, and in fact, I would argue you could almost consider this a sort of reverse broken windows theory. Having rules or norms regarding the language police officers use when they interact with the public sends the message that "you're a professional and you're expected to behave like a professional," whereas not having such norms would seem to send the message that the police can treat the public however they choose, both in words and maybe also in deeds.
I generally agree with McWhorter too, but just want to point out that we do still have rules against profanity that are rigorously enforced, that can cost you your job and career, etc. It's just that the specific words that are considered taboo have changed.
War is the result of miscalculation.
There was an old Star Trek episode where they find two planets at war. But instead of actually fighting a computer calculates how many people would have died in the war and the citizens of each society go to suicide booths dutifully and avoid all the destruction. The Enterprise is appalled and destroys the computer, saying that if they are forced to face the hellish reality of war they might forge true peace.
But I wonder, what if the computer decided that one side won the war, would the other side commit true mass suicide. What if it said that some people were killed but the rest were conquered, would they change their government and be ruled by the foreign power? What if one side felt the computer simulation was wrong, would it dispute the results? How would it do so, by starting a real war?
Even if war is very destructive, that just raises the issue of "war is so destructive you should give into our demands rather then risk war."
Lookin at say the Ukraine war, it's clear that Putin overestimated how easy it would be to depose the Ukranian government. It's also clear that the Ukranians underestimated Russian strength and overestimated western assistance. If people could have seen how this would end up, they probably would have either avoided war altogether or signed a peace a month in, but they disagreed on what the facts of the conflict were.
There is one aspect of warfare that I think is hard to replicate outside of it. The TRUTH factor. Who is your friend and who is your enemy? Who is competent and who is not? What organizing principles and weapons work and which ones do not?
Just as capitalism answers those questions for market goods, war answers those questions for martial strength. Some have said that this war weakens Russia, and it does in some way. But in another way its going to burn off a lot of the beuracratic rot and leave a veteran experience army.
I don't know, Vietnam didn't exactly leave the US with an effective veteran army. These things are complex and the incentives in Russia favor loyalty over competence.
It is indeed complex and not either/or.
Even Vietnam:
1) Drastically increased the effectiveness of trauma wound care.
2) Refined aerial combat doctrine.
3) Helped switch America from a conscript army to an all volunteer professional force.
Not worth the costs, but there are some benefits.
I just dislike when I hear people like Lindsay Graham talk with glee about killing Russians. Killing Russians does in fact weaken Russia in some way, but not any way that matters to us. It's not like Russia is going to run out of manpower, you kill a million and there are millions more. The loss in Russian manpower doesn't seem to me to make up for all the lessons learned they are going to walk away with. Just as the Red Army of 1945 was a lot stronger than the Red Army of 1941 despite huge losses.
Our house doesn't have Cable TV, but we have streaming. My mother watches lot of it, and I don't think it's that different then if we had cable. She still gets her TV News fix by watching Youtube of CNN or whatever.
There are of course differences between episodic TV on a schedule vs instant streaming, but its still a person sitting in a chair and consuming what's on the screen.
It's funny because the focus of the post wasn't so much the death of TV (which is true), but rather the very different form and style of media that the youngs consume, which is predominantly youtube, tiktok and insta, i.e. non-serialized content. In other words, the future isn't necessarily streaming either--and net adds to streamium is slowing considerably--but something else entirely. To the extent that "we are what we eat" from a media and information-mix standpoint, the youngs will be different, and the change will be striking (bc the transition is non-linear).
'57 Channels and Nothin' On' was a Springsteen song from the early '90s. It was and is the same dynamic with today's TV/streaming. More content is in theory good. But the average quality goes down and it's often difficult to find the good stuff.
I'm a little skeptical the cop using four letter words in the Floyd situation made any difference except that it indicates a likely attitude of the cop.
Similarly, I don't think vulgar language is disrespectful in all situations though it seems more likely it always is among strangers, especially by cops.
I have been trying to get my mother to ditch the satellite television package for the last 5 years. Everything she watches is easily found on the streaming services/internet. It is like talking to a brick wall.
> I know that we do not necessarily need one more screed against the progressive left. But I think that Fr. Kiely makes a point that I think is worthy of emphasis—the extent to which beliefs become fashionable in certain crowds. I have said before that I think affluent teenagers in the United States find it fashionable to claim LGBTQ+ sexual identities. And it has become fashionable to be anti-capitalist and anti-Israel.
A couple of the phenomena in play here (there are many others of course):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
The most interesting part is: people on both sides of the divide are experiencing these things, but do not know it. Planet Earth, 2023, is a head trip if one looks at it from the top down.
I don't think there will be nostalgia for cable TV either. And I agree that it is dying. What I do think is valuable is the concept of the entertainment bundle, and I do not think that any of the streaming services have figured out that bundle yet. If I pay for a bundle of Netflix, Hulu, Max, Prime, then there is always something to watch and it is a useful bundle. If I only pay for one of them, and I don't like the shows on that service, I am more likely to cancel. So I think the future is more bundling because that will make the subscriptions much stickier.
Cable TV is a bundle of channels. The cable companies also figured out how to make it extremely difficult to cancel or change your service - it is a wonder that this hasn't gotten more attention from competition authorities. But that model will eventually permeate the streaming world and cable TV will go gently into the night.
I agree with McWhorter. Similar to AK’s AI Essay Grader, I wonder whether it would be feasible to train an AI to scan police body cam and dash cam footage (or even just audio) and develop a police interaction civility scale (ranging from civil to extreme dominance/hostility). Even if the outcomes were published as aggregate data for a police unit or force, it could lead to better police/civilian interactions. There are also lots of possibilities to incentivize good behavior once the behavior is tracked and measured.
"I think that the case for TV dying is even stronger."
Lol.
The future of CBS,NBC,ABC,FOX will likely change but there's no evidence of them going away. And the fact that I have about 5x as many antenna TV stations in the last ten years speaks more loudly that this is not like newspapers.
It is true that cable is fading but that's because it is being replaced by Netflix and other on-demand subscriptions. Are you saying that ISN'T TV?
I expect some of the on-demand providers to fail but that's only because there are so many trying to capture that market.
Finally, the lol. While it's possible sports will all go pay per view, that seems unlikely. Some type of live "TV" will continue to make money on that.
I was at the gym last night and NBC Nightly News came on and I thought to myself "This is still on?"
I liked the one on police profanity. I think casual profanity may seem cool, but it leads to lower quality thinking.
I don't even like fake curse words. You're upset about something, take a moment to verbalize exactly what you're upset about.
McWhorter is on the money when he says "...police officers should not use profanity in ways that connote hostility, impatience, or dominance." And so are you, in my opinion, about the idea that the indiscriminate use of profanity demonstrates lack of respect for others. Instead of lifting up or being constructive, it is yet another way we ruin and vulgarize human interactions.
I was on a jury this summer in my Texas college town and we got to see pretty much the entire encounter between two police officers and two individuals not following instructions via the body cams. The officers were incredibly calm and polite the entire time, never using profanity, always using "sir" and "ma'am", etc. We acquitted the defendant (of the somewhat odd charge of interfering with a peace officer - there was no "criminal negligence" in the defendant's actions, a required element) but I also left with a great respect for our local PD for how it handled a difficult situation. Body cams are a fantastic thing and should be used widely. If we hadn't seen that, I think it would have been a much harder case.
A lot of cops seem angry all the time. They don't just direct traffic; they yell at you if you show the very slightest uncertainty about where it is they want you to go, e.g. in an intersection they've closed down for some reason. KEEP MOVING!!
The other day a patrolman ran me off the road, basically, and was mad about it. It was a two-lane street, heavy with traffic at that time, no shoulder, curbed but cut at intervals for various medical buildings and shopping centers and such*, with really nowhere for me to go - so when the cop came bearing down on me, siren going, honking - I didn't figure he wanted me to be the lead car of this pursuit, you know. So after fifty feet or so, as soon as able, I pulled over to the right in the driveway of an office building so he could get on past me. Well, wouldn't you know it, that was the driveway he wanted to enter. Then he really went ballistic!
It was hard for me to imagine whatever scenario he was responding to in that office building, should have made him so pre-emptively jumpy.
On the other hand, I witnessed sort of an opposite-George-Floyd situation last year, when a homeless druggie briefly inhabited a vacant apartment in my building, unbeknownst to everyone. This might have continued but he ruined it for himself by hollering in the middle of the night in our perfectly peaceful courtyard. Someone called the police. Two came to deal with him, black guy, and a woman. That black cop patiently listened to the crazy person talk for about 2 hours. What's more, unlike a lot of policemen who if you ask them, what's going on 30 feet from your house (or across the foyer, in this case) - well, you're the last person it would please them to say a word to. But this cop told me plainly what was going on. Finally they took him off without incident.
*The ordinary street grid, sufficient even 10 years ago, is showing the strain of population growth in that city.
One of my brothers was LEO and recently retired. We've had many discussions about police work, the good/bad, etc. I wonder why anyone would want to be a cop (and recruitment now is harder than ever). But we need them and they need us (law abiding folk). It's hard to know what caused that patrolman to behave like that towards you. Maybe his previous call was to an accident fatality, maybe his spouse told him she wanted a divorce, perhaps he was on his way to a violent situation, or maybe he's just a jerk and shouldn't be in law enforcement. Who knows, but in any case it sounds like he was out of line. I'm glad you also experienced the better side, the human side, of police work, too. More of that goes on than we hear about.
Impossible task: in Austin, during I guess the BLM protests, the police were provided with "beanbag rounds" to fire at people who were shoving them or trying to break through barricades or whatever.
I mean, I am pretty sure these guys don't carry beanbags around in their pockets all the time.
So on the given day, they shot these beanbags at people, who got bruised and inevitably sued the city and got a fantastic payday because such people - the sort of folks who, maybe their brother was brandishing a weapon the 129th time they called the police about him, and this time the cops shot him: payday for the fam! - always get paydays out of the city because we have to pretend the city couldn't hire a good lawyer.
But then beyond that, the local DA decided to charge a whole bunch of these cops - 17! - with assault. The crime of shooting beanbags. Which were issued by more or less the same government entity that employs the DA.
Basically, if you as a cop showed up to work that day, you were showing up to be charged with an offense by your law-and-order bosses.
They dropped the charges, finally - after letting them hang over those dudes for 3 years.
Great recruitment strategy!
Indeed. I don't know anyone in that line of work - it is something most people are allergic to, and allergic to directing their kids to, in the enclaves where I have lived. I am aware that the "type" I described, while not the type of man I prefer, may be what the job demands. I would only suggest that the degree to which our society is collapsing, means we may not get the kind of policemen we might personally prefer. This actually seems pretty evident to me.
I mean, no offense to George Floyd, who actually doesn't seem like the worst of thugs by any measure - but who wants to spend all their time marinating in the world of drugs and dysfunction and violence? Hopefully those for whom it is a call - but we're making it awfully hard for normal guys who feel that call.
I got to see a pro-Palestinian demonstration close up a few months ago in Toronto, when I needed to cross right through it to get to a subway station. It was very much like our anti-Vietnam war protests in the sixties. While there was a generous proportion of swarthy middle easterners, about half the crowd was wholesome-looking high school and college-aged kids, all excited as if they were on their way to a concert or some other peer event. It obviously a trendy event for these kids, who seemed to be from the same suburban, aspirant intellectual class that made up the early anti-Vietnam War demos - only without the smart Jewish kids who were so prominent in the 60s.
No one can predict or control these youth fevers, whether it's the Beatles, BLM or LGBQT.
That exact atmosphere prevailed circa 1990-91 at my college campus: finally, a chance to do something reminiscent of '60s protests (a very well-photographed phenomenon, which I think was more crucial than the actual attitudes or ideas involved). "No blood for oil!"
Blood for oil: a good slogan. A statement of fact, really. But not really clear where you were going to go with that ... The rejection (whether based in style or substance) of materialism in the earlier youth movement, was not revived; or if it was, it had pitifully few fans (such as myself, candidly).
We too lived in a petrostate. And so many of our relatives had had a hand in the Western development of drilling in the Middle East. Even as far back as the '20s: I have a cache of postcards, printed menus, maps, and train schedules from my husband's deep East Texas great-grandfather - from Persia, Syria, Lebanon, whatever Iraq was called ... he worked for the railroad company. My own corporate lawyer uncle was annually in Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi or Nigeria or Libya ... and beyond, even Kabul. Ditto my only other uncle, though he drilled the wells.
They did the work to bring out the oil, to move it, to market it.
Is it ever a good idea for people to profit by not doing their own work? Is this not one of the lessons of the American South?
You create the conditions in which people are not going to play nice. Of course there would be blood for oil! How ridiculous to imagine there would not be - if you really care who they sell it to!
All "youth fevers" are not created equal. I knew at the time we were only play-acting.
And when I think of where Osama Bin Laden was, all that time - it is hard in retrospect not to feel that the Long War in particular was in some sense play-acting too.
Re: profanity, quite a few people I think look at it from exactly the opposite direction that you do. That is, the use of profanity is a sign of familiarity. You don't curse around your boss or a teacher because it's against the rules, but around friends, you can let your hair down a bit and say what you really think. Cursing around someone (not to be confused with cursing at someone) is therefore a sign that you consider that person to be, if not a friend exactly, at least an equal and someone you don't need to observe every letter of every social convention around. I'm not arguing in favor of your view or this one, just pointing it out.
I am tempted to agree with McWhorter when it comes to the police, though, and in fact, I would argue you could almost consider this a sort of reverse broken windows theory. Having rules or norms regarding the language police officers use when they interact with the public sends the message that "you're a professional and you're expected to behave like a professional," whereas not having such norms would seem to send the message that the police can treat the public however they choose, both in words and maybe also in deeds.
Writing tiny textbooks is a decent place to start for the anti-Israel problem.
?
For In My Tribe insiders.